The Buried Giant (30 page)

“Leave her, stranger. Leave her to us. Leave her, stranger.”

Axl swung the hoe again, and it moved as though the air were thick water, but found its mark, scattering several creatures even as more arrived.

“Leave her to us, stranger,” the old woman said again, and only this time did it occur to him, with a stab of fear that seemed bottomless, that the speaker was talking not of the dying stranger before him but of Beatrice. And turning to his wife’s basket in the reeds, he saw the waters around it alive with limbs and shoulders. His own basket was nearly capsizing from the pull of the creatures trying to climb in, preserved only by the ballast of those already inside. But they were boarding his basket only to gain access to its neighbour. He could see other creatures massing over the animal skin covering Beatrice, and uttering a cry, he climbed the side of the boat and let himself fall into the water. It was deeper than he had anticipated, coming above his waist, but the shock of it took his breath only for an instant, before he let out a warrior’s bellow that came to him as if from a distant memory, and he lurched towards the baskets, the hoe held high above him. There was tugging at his clothes, and the water felt honey-like, but when he brought the hoe down onto his own basket, even though his weapon travelled with frustrating slowness through the air, once it landed more creatures than he could have
suspected tumbled out into the water. The next swing caused even greater destruction—he must this time have swung with the blade outwards, for was that not bloodied flesh he saw flying up into the sunlight? And yet Beatrice remained an age away, floating complacently even as the creatures rose about her, and now they came from the land too, pouring through the grass on the riverbank. Creatures were now even hanging from his hoe and he let it fall into the water, suddenly wishing only to be at Beatrice’s side.

He waded through the weeds, the broken bulrushes, the mud tugging at his feet, but Beatrice remained further away than ever. Then came the stranger’s voice again, and even though now, down in the water, he could no longer see her, Axl could picture the old woman with startling clarity in his mind’s eye, slumped on the floor of her boat in the morning sun, the pixies moving freely over her as she uttered the words he could hear:

“Leave her, stranger. Leave her to us.”

“Curse you,” Axl muttered under his breath, as he pushed himself forward. “I’ll never, never give her up.”

“A wise man like you, stranger. You’ve known a long time now there’s no cure to save her. How will you bear it, what now lies in wait for her? Do you long for that day you watch your dearest love twist in agony and with nothing to offer but kind words for her ear? Give her to us and we’ll ease her suffering, as we’ve done for all these others before her.”

“Curse you! I’ll not give her to you!”

“Give her to us and we’ll see she suffers no pain. We’ll wash her in the river’s waters, the years will fall from her, and she’ll be as in a pleasant dream. Why keep her, sir? What can you give her but the agony of an animal in slaughter?”

“I’ll be rid of you. Get off. Get off her.”

Locking his hands together to make a club, he swung one way then the other, clearing a path in the water as he waded on, till at last
he was before Beatrice, still fast asleep in her basket. The pixies were swarming over the animal skin that covered her, and he began to pull them off one by one, hurling them away.

“Why will you not give her to us? This is no kindness you show her.”

He pushed the basket through the water until the ground rose up and the basket was sitting on wet mud amidst grass and bulrushes. He leant forward then and gathered his wife in his arms, lifting her out. Thankfully she came back to wakefulness enough to cling to his neck, and they made faltering steps together, first onto the bank, then further, into the fields. Only when the land felt hard and dry beneath them did Axl lower her, and they sat in the grass together, he recovering his breath, she becoming steadily more awake.

“Axl, what is this place we’ve come to?”

“Princess, how are you feeling now? We must get away from this spot. I’ll carry you on my back.”

“Axl, you’re soaked through! Did you fall in the river?”

“This is an evil spot, princess, and we must leave quickly. I’ll gladly carry you on my back, the way I used to do when we were young and foolish and enjoying a warm spring’s day.”

“Must we leave the river behind us? Sir Gawain’s right surely that it will carry us all the more swiftly where we’ll go. The land here looks as high in the mountains as we ever were before.”

“We’ve no choice, princess. We must get far from here. Come, I’ll have you on my back. Come, princess, reach for my shoulders.”

Chapter Twelve

He could hear the warrior’s voice below him, appealing to him to climb more slowly, but Edwin ignored it. Wistan was too slow, and in general appeared not to appreciate the urgency of their situation. When they were still not halfway up the cliff, he had asked Edwin: “Can that be a hawk just flew past us, young comrade?” What did it matter what it was? His fever had made the warrior soft, both in mind and body.

Only a little further to climb, then he at least would be over the edge and standing on firm ground. He could then run—how he longed to run!—but to where? Their destination had, for the moment, drifted beyond his recall. What was more, there had been something important to tell the warrior: he had been deceiving Wistan about something, and now it was almost time to confess. When they had started their climb, leaving the exhausted mare tied to a shrub beside the mountain path, he had resolved to make a clean breast of it once they reached the top. Yet now he was almost there, his mind held nothing but confused wisps.

He clambered over the last rocks and pulled himself up over the precipice. The land before him was bare and wind-scarred, rising
gradually towards the pale peaks on the horizon. Nearby were patches of heather and mountain grass, but nothing taller than a man’s ankle. Yet strangely, there in the mid-distance, was what appeared to be a wood, its lush trees standing calmly against the battling wind. Had some god, on a whim, picked up in his fingers a section of rich forest and set it down in this inhospitable terrain?

Though out of breath from the climb, Edwin pushed himself forward into a run. For those trees, surely, were where he had to be, and once there he would remember everything. Wistan’s voice was shouting again somewhere behind him—the warrior must finally have arrived at the top—but Edwin, not glancing back, ran all the faster. He would leave his confession until those trees. Within their shelter, he would be able to remember more clearly, and they could talk without the wind’s howl.

The ground came up to meet him and knocked the breath from him. It happened so unexpectedly he was obliged to lie there a moment, quite dazed, and when he tried to spring back to his feet something soft but forceful kept him down. He realised then that Wistan’s knee was on his back, and that his hands were being tied behind him.

“You asked before why we must carry rope with us,” Wistan said. “Now you see how useful it can be.”

Edwin began to remember their exchange down on the path below. Eager to start the climb, he had been annoyed by the way the warrior was carefully transferring items from his saddle into two sacks for them to carry.

“We must hurry, warrior! Why do we need all these things?”

“Here, carry this, comrade. The she-dragon’s foe enough without us growing weak with cold and hunger to aid her.”

“But the scent will be lost! And what need do we have of rope?”

“We may need it yet, young comrade, and we won’t find it growing on branches up there.”

Now the rope had been wound around his waist as well as his wrists, so that when finally he rose to his feet, he could move forward only against the pull of his leash.

“Warrior, are you no longer my friend and teacher?”

“I’m still that and your protector too. From here you must go with less haste.”

He found he did not mind the rope. The gait it obliged him to adopt was like that of a mule, and he was reminded of a time not long ago when he had had to impersonate just such a beast, going round and round a wagon. Was he the same mule now, stubbornly pushing his way up the slope even as the rope pulled him back?

He pulled and pulled, occasionally managing several steps at a run before the rope jerked him to a halt. A voice was in his ears—a familiar voice—half-singing, half-chanting a children’s rhyme, one he knew well from when he was younger. It was comforting and disturbing in equal measure and he found if he chanted along while tugging on the rope, the voice lost something of its unsettling edge. So he chanted, at first under his breath, then with less inhibition into the wind: “Who knocked over the cup of ale? Who cut off the dragon’s tail? Who left the snake inside the pail? ’Twas your Cousin Adny.” There were further lines he did not remember, but he was surprised to find that he had but to chant along with the voice and the words would come out correctly.

The trees were near now and the warrior tugged him back again. “Slowly, young comrade. We need more than courage to enter this strange grove. Look there. Pine trees at this height’s no mystery, but aren’t those oaks and elms beside them?”

“No matter what trees grow here, warrior, or what birds fly these skies! We have little time left and must hurry!”

They entered the wood and the ground changed beneath them: there was soft moss, nettles, even ferns. The leaves above them were dense enough to form a ceiling, so that for a while they wandered in
a grey half-light. Yet this was no forest, for soon they could see before them a clearing with its circle of open sky above it. The thought came to Edwin that if this was indeed the work of a god, the intention must have been to conceal with these trees whatever lay ahead. He pulled angrily at the rope, saying:

“Why dally, warrior? Can it be you’re afraid?”

“Look at this place, young comrade. Your hunter’s instincts have served us well. This must be the dragon’s lair before us now.”

“I’m the hunter of us two, warrior, and I tell you that clearing holds no dragon. We must hurry past it and beyond, for we’ve further to go!”

“Your wound, young comrade. Let me see if it remains clean.”

“Never mind my wound! I tell you the scent will be lost! Let go the rope, warrior. I’ll run on even if you will not!”

This time Wistan released him, and Edwin pushed past thistles and tangled roots. Several times he lost his balance, for trussed as he was he had no hand to put out to steady himself. But he reached the clearing without injury, and stopped at its edge to take in the sight before him.

At the centre of the clearing was a pond. It was frozen over, so a man—were he brave or foolish enough—might cross it in twenty or so strides. The smoothness of the ice’s surface was interrupted only near the far side, where the hollowed-out trunk of a dead tree burst up through it. Along the bank, not far from the ruined tree, a large ogre was crouching down on its knees and elbows at the water’s very edge, its head completely submerged. Perhaps the creature had been drinking—or searching for something beneath the surface—and had been overtaken by the sudden freeze. To a careless observer, the ogre might have been a headless corpse, decapitated as it crawled to quench its thirst.

The patch of sky above the pond cast a strange light down on the ogre, and Edwin stared at it for a while, almost expecting it to return
to life, bringing up a ghastly and flushed face. Then, with a start, he realised there was a second creature in an identical posture on the far right-hand edge of the pond. And there!—yet a third, not far before him, on the near bank, half-concealed by the ferns.

Ogres usually aroused only revulsion in him, but these creatures, and the eerie melancholy of their postures, made Edwin feel a tug of pity. What had brought them to such a fate? He began to move toward them, but the rope was taut again, and he heard Wistan say close behind him:

“Do you still deny this is a dragon’s lair, comrade?”

“Not here, warrior. We must go further.”

“Yet this spot whispers to me. Even if not her lair, isn’t this a place she comes to drink and bathe?”

“I say it’s cursed, warrior, and no place to do battle with her. We’ll have only ill luck here. Look at those poor ogres. And they almost as large as the fiends you killed the other night.”

“What do you speak of, boy?”

“Don’t you see them? Look, there! And there!”

“Master Edwin, you’ve become exhausted, as I feared. Let’s rest a while. Even if this is a gloomy spot, it gives us respite from the wind.”

“How can you talk of rest, warrior? And isn’t that how those poor creatures met their fate, loitering in this bewitched place too long? Heed their warning, warrior!”

“The only warning I heed tells me to make you rest before you drive your own heart to burst.”

He felt himself tugged, and his back struck against the bark of a tree. Then the warrior was trudging around him, circling rope about his chest and shoulders till he could hardly move.

“This good tree means you no harm, young comrade.” The warrior placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Why waste strength this way to uproot it? Calm yourself and rest, I say, while I study more closely this place.”

He watched Wistan picking his way through the nettles down to the pond. Reaching the water’s edge, the warrior spent several moments walking slowly back and forth, staring closely at the ground, sometimes crouching down to examine whatever caught his eye. Then he straightened, and for a long time seemed to fall into a reverie, gazing over at the trees on the far side of the pond. For Edwin, the warrior was now a near-silhouette against the frozen water. Why did he not even glance towards the ogres?

Wistan made a movement and suddenly the sword was in his hand, the arm poised and unmoving in the air. Then the weapon was returned to its scabbard and the warrior, turning from the water, came walking back towards him.

“We’re hardly the first visitors here,” he said. “Even this past hour, some party’s come this way, and it’s no she-dragon. Master Edwin, I’m glad to see you calmer.”