Chains of Gold (9 page)

And then a rumbling sounded from within earth itself. And the boulders rolled aside, and a shower of sand, a fountain, burst out of the top of the esker. And out of the cavity it left behind a forked tongue came forth, a tongue as long as a sword but sinuous, flickering; and then dreamlike, swaying and graceful, a serpent's head of a size to go with it, a head as large as a chest or a treasure casket, beautiful—I could not help but think it beautiful, though I knelt rooted with fear. For every scale on it was distinct to my sight, so close did it sway over me, like a polished shield, and all colors shimmered in them, bice blue and amber and verdigris and an earthy red as of clay, and its eyes were as large as a cloak brooch but more like giant shining jewels, rubies, blood red with black slits in them, like cat's eyes, except that when it moved its head the slit pointed always toward earth—it looked at all of us in that fashion, with a fixed gaze that seemed relentlessly to pierce us. There was no question any longer among Eachan's men of slow retreat. They yelled in terror and fled, most on horseback but a few of them afoot, for their mounts were as terrified as they were and had broken away when they could. They ran, and the sound of their shouting faded into distance.

I sat quite still with Arlen's head in my arms, for I would not leave him. He was breathing steadily, but his eyes had closed, and if he had seen the giant serpent of the esker he gave no sign of it. We stared at each other, snake and I—and as if for my benefit the creature sank from sight. The esker folded in on itself, sand and rock settled, and all was as it had been before. When I looked about me, even the smaller serpents were gone.

I got up, trying to rouse Arlen without hurting him too much. “Arl, come on,” I begged, tugging at him. “Come, we have to get you onto Bucca.”

The sound of my voice compelled him somewhat. He blinked and reached up to me, and I was able to help him to his feet, support him with his arm over my shoulder, my arm around his waist. We slid as much as walked over the top of the esker and down the far side toward where the horse stood tethered. But we somehow remained upright; and when I leaned him against the saddle, placed his foot in the stirrup, and boosted him he was able to mount. The effort cost him mightily; he groaned and fainted, falling forward onto Bucca's neck, and I had to grasp his hand to keep him from falling off. Blood on the hand, on his shoulders, his head, his thigh.… Goddess of mercy, help us.

I found the reins somehow and urged Bucca toward the nearest refuge, the homestead whence I had taken the tools. Folk looked out the window; I saw them. They could not see the esker beyond the larches, could not have seen the fighting or the great serpent, but they would see the blood if they were not blind and know Arlen was hurt. They had to help him.

They disappeared from the window as I drew nearer. No one answered my knock, and the door did not yield to my touch.

“Help us,” I appealed to the blank boards. “He is wounded. He will die if you do not give us aid.”

Silence, and the unmoving door.

“Open up!”

I could envision them clustered inside, pretending not to be there when I knew better, and the thought maddened me.

“Open up, or by the goddess I will curse you with the curse of the wandering dead who are denied—”

“I'll not open to ye nohow!” a man's voice bawled from within, interrupting me. “Curse all ye like; how can ye curse me with aught worse than what ye are, ye death-dogged wench—”

“Take him to the witch!” a woman shrieked. “Take him to the devil in his soddy, and let us be, and hap he'll be addled enough to succor ye.”

The witch. The devil in his soddy. If it were the small brown man who had greeted us, he might.

“Curse you anyway,” I muttered, turning and leading Bucca away.

It seemed that there was nothing for it but to go back up over the esker. I sweated with fear, doing that, now that I knew what lay beneath. But nothing stirred under my feet, and as we climbed my fear of the serpent gave way to a sharper and more stinging fear. Arlen's breathing had gone shallow, his face the color of old snow, his hand cold in mine, as cold as the cold winter wind.

“Mother, help him,” I begged the wind as we hurried down the farther side, too fast for safety.

A stretch of snowy moorland, and then the copse, the dugout in the hillside just below it. The roof was of grass, the walls all of piled peat, smelling damp and earthy even in the deep winter freeze. I shall always think of that place when I smell the sod smell, and of that time, and of the spur of fear in me.

The door was of wood, and it stood closed. I rapped and cried out, “Please hurry—”

It opened.

Several sorts of feelings went through me in an unexpected surge: hope, gratitude, rage, desolation, maybe a few more, but mostly hope—even though the man had been called a witch, and even though the expression of his face was not promising, not welcoming, not anything of the usual human sort, merely brown and blank.

“A bed,” I said incoherently. “He needs—help, some warmth, a healer—”

“There is no bed,” he said.

At the time it seemed a setback beyond bearing. “No bed!” I shouted, fairly ranting at him. “Do you not sleep?”

“Not in the usual way.” Nevertheless, he stepped back, opening the door wide to me. “But we will put something down for him. Bring him in.”

“Horse and all?” I railed. I am sure I do not know why he did not despair of me and shut the door in my face. He was offering us aid, and I was so demented, I was shouting at him.

Nor did he shout back. Instead, he merely stepped to Bucca's side, took Arlen down in his arms, and carried him easily within.

SEVEN

The soddy seemed very much like any cottage toward the front, except that the floor and walls were made of earth. Farther back, though, it began to get hillocky, with mounds of loose earth piled up and roots hanging down. I didn't care. It was warm. A peat fire burned on a small brick hearth. The man had me lay our blankets right before it, and then he put Arlen down on them, gently, and I began to peel blood-soaked clothing from him.

“Wait,” the man said. “Boil water first. He is not bleeding any more; leave him.”

How could I just leave him lying there? But the small brown man already had a kettle of water suspended over the fire, and he was crumbling herbs of several sorts into it. I suspected bitterly that he could care for Arlen better than I.

“And you,” he said to the center of the room, “out. It is crowded enough in here without you.”

At first I thought he was speaking to me, and I bristled. But before I could snap at him again I felt a peculiar sort of lightening sensation, a clarity, that I could not identify. It had come on me so gradually and had been with me so long that I took a long moment to comprehend: the presence was gone.

“It is waiting for you outside,” the witch said. “Cold does not dismay it.”

He spoke offhandedly, as of something he understood completely. I stared at him from my seat on the dirt floor. Here was one who would speak to me, vouchsafe me answers. The thought took my breath.

“But—what is it?” I whispered at last.

“Why, a dead person.” He seemed surprised at my ignorance. “It has attached itself to you for some reason.”

“But—what reason?”

“Why, you must tell. Is it revenge, perhaps? Have you been cruel to someone who has since died?” He spoke with complete detachment, as if it meant nothing to him whether I were a cruel person or not. But I had never had occasion or inclination to be a villain. I shook my head.

“Has a parent of yours been cruel to such a one? Sometimes such spirits are unreasonable in their vengeance.”

Certainly my father was cruel. “But it does not seem vengeful, really,” I said. “It has done me no harm except that folk flee from me when it is with me, which is a nuisance—and at times it has done me only good, showed me food, given pause to my enemies. I think it was by the aid of this—this death presence that my father's men were routed just now.”

“Why, then,” said the witch, “it must be someone who has loved you.”

I could not think who, and my mind gave it up wearily. I watched him take the steaming water from the fire. He had found a clean cloth and was preparing to dress Arlen's wounds, and, unsmiling, he beckoned me to help him. He never smiled, I noticed, but neither did he frown. I did not care to wonder why he was helping us, but I did wonder who he was, or what. He seemed as dry and tough as a seasoned oak knot, moving about silently on his bare brown twisted feet. I could not begin to guess his age. “Do you have a name?” I blurted at him.

“Briony. Or Bri, if you like.”

I did not like; I was half frightened of him. But his hands were deft and gentle as he washed and coaxed the stiffened clothing off Arlen's wounds, bathed the wounds and inspected them, and applied a thick, yellow salve. Arlen hardly stirred under his touch, even when he lifted and turned him. Briony took new bleached cotton cloth, washed soft but never used, and ripped it into strips for bandaging. I helped him wrap them on. Then he brought a goatskin of wine, and as he poured it into a noggin I saw it, black. That might have been because of the dim light, oil lamp light, but I caught distinctly the scent of elderberries, and I must have stiffened, for he looked at me.

“Yes,” he said, “I eat them too. Here, hold his head up for me.”

I had Arlen's head in my lap at the time, so I took it into my arms, steadying it while Briony held the noggin to his lips and made him sip from it by stroking his throat. Slowly, Arlen drank what Briony gave him.

“Elderberry wine is good for most ills,” the witch added, as if in afterthought. “Would you like some?” he asked me.

I shook my head without thinking.

“Well,” He sat the noggin down. “Arlen will do nicely for a while now, and I will watch him. You had better tend to your horse if it is not to perish.”

Bucca! How long had he been standing in the cold? I hurried out. He had not even been tethered, it seemed, but he had not strayed far; he was pawing at the snow, trying to find some withered grass to eat. There was no barn by the soddy, not even a cattle shed. Nowhere to take him for shelter except up in the copse. I led him there and got the saddle and bridle off him and put my mantle over him for want of a blanket. There were some laurel bushes growing amidst the trees, too low to do him any good, but I considered that if I could make him a sort of framework and thatch it with boughs, anything against the cold wind—I felt absurdly anxious to care well for the horse, perhaps because I felt so helpless regarding Arlen.

I went in. Arlen lay as I had left him, and a good smell of meat filled the soddy; Briony was cooking something in the kettle.

“May I take the ax,” I asked him, “and cut some limbs and bushes to make a shelter for him?” Meaning Bucca.

“What is the steed to eat?” Briony asked, his face expressionless as ever, and I shook my head. I did not know. Briony continued to stare at me, though the stare was not at all hard.

“Where is that dead one of yours?” he asked me. “Did it follow you about, outside?”

“No!” I stood dumbfounded. Gone, the presence was gone! Just when I was beginning to think who it might be—

“If you were to take the horse to the neighbors now that you are without your death dog,” Briony said, “I believe they might put it in the barn for you.”

Too stunned and spent by the events of the day to feel diffident about facing them again, I turned forthwith and started out to see to it.

“And be quick,” Briony said. “Dark is coming on, and I smell the beginnings of a storm.”

All the more reason to get Bucca under roof. I closed the door, but he opened it after me.

“And borrow some bedding,” he said, “if you want to have any, for there is none here.”

“Very well,” I muttered, breaking into a run.

If even the bridle had been on Bucca I could have scrambled on somehow and ridden him, but I had dragged and heaved his gear into the soddy, and I was not about to go back yet again. So I led Bucca rather than rode him, with my green sash looped around his neck, and we trudged off into the gathering darkness.

Over the esker yet once more, by the mighty Mother, too tired this time to be very much afraid.

Briony had deemed rightly. The outlanders at the homestead seemed embarrassed rather than afraid to see me, willing enough to help me, anxious to send me away in a state of goodwill. They put Bucca in the barn and heaped his manger with hay and corn. They brought me blankets, a pillow, a straw tick. They were quick about it, but wind was rising and daylight gone when I set off again. I noticed that none of them offered to see me back with a lantern, big brawny folk though they were. They smiled nervously, and I guessed that their fear was not all gone.

No matter, I thought. It was not far to the soddy.

I had no more than topped the esker when the storm struck with force. Hissing, seething, coiling, stinging wind—the old stories say that the winds are disembodied serpents from out of the four linked lakes of the Catena, winged vipers, asps out of the Afterworld, and I believe it, they chill one so. And snow came with the wind. I could feel it prickling me in the night, and at once I could see nothing, and I was no longer sure in what direction the soddy lay, for I suspected the wind had pushed me off my path. Wind be cursed. This was the cold north wind again, old Bora, goddess in windserpent form, and I hated her.

I trudged on, facing the wind, not very afraid, for I had an armload of blankets—I could survive the night by wrapping up in them once I found the lee of a slope or a coppice. But I badly wanted to find my way back to Arlen's side, to know how he was, to bring a pillow for his head. I blundered on into the storm long after a sensible person would have turned aside to find shelter. And just when I was beginning to pant with frustration I spied a light, off to the left and some small way ahead, a soft whitish light, and I quickened my lagging steps as I turned toward it.