The Fall of Chance (29 page)

The bank was close, just more than an arm’s reach away. The root reached down toward him like a deathly arm offering salvation from the grave.

He reached out to touch it but it was too far. His fingertips brushed its wet surface but he wasn’t near enough to grip.

“No!” he sobbed, “No!” This was what Lasper had wanted, for Unt to die alone and forgotten in a miserable hole. The thought gave him resolve. He wouldn’t let that old bastard have his way.

He leaned back, tensing his body like the arm of a catapult. Then he flung himself forward. His whole torso slapped down with a wet smack. His face went in the mire but the fingers of one hand had coiled around a branch.

It was the most tenuous grip but it was the start he needed. Seizing the moment, he grabbed the branch with his other hand. He then inched his fingers closer till he had a proper grip. He sighed in relief and relaxed a bit but he kept his fingers taut.

He stayed there a moment to catch his breath and when he’d got his strength back, he pulled with all his might. It wasn’t enough to get him loose. It didn’t seem like he’d moved an inch but the stretch to the branch was slacker. He had made some progress.

Again, he rested and again, he hauled. Once more, there was just a little more slack. He carried on like this for Fate knew how long and inch by inch, he clawed his way out. At last, his trailing leg was pulled free, then came the other. He hauled his body to the bottom of the slope and clung on.

Physically and mentally, his strength was exhausted. He just wanted to hang there and sleep but he knew he had to get the job finished. He looked up the slope. It was maybe eight feet to the top: a huge ask, but do-able.

With gritted teeth, he pulled himself onward. “Bastard!” he spat with every haul. “Bastard!” He focused on his hatred of Lasper, drawing strength from it. There was nothing but his hate, the branch and the slope.

Inch by slick inch, he worked his way up. When he pulled his head above the crest he had no energy left for triumph. He slithered his body over the summit and lay still.

He could have slept there forever but he settled for what he guessed was an hour. His face lay against the dirt, looking down on the site that could have been his grave. “I can’t do this,” he groaned.

He staggered to his feet and shuffled along until he got to firm ground. He found a corner and lay down to sleep. He didn’t know what direction he’d taken and he didn’t care. He just settled down to endure his first night of discomfort.

*              *              *              *

That night, he woke in darkness, shivering in his damp clothes. The moon had been near-full for the last few nights but it had no more luck penetrating this place than the sun did during the day.

At night, the forest was noisy, much more than it had been during the day. He knew it was only small creatures with big voices but knowing didn’t help. The blackness was so complete that the only things in the world were those guttural animal noises. He spent the rest of the night in terror until just before dawn when the noises finally stopped.

*              *              *              *

Ten days into his exile, Unt was starting to learn things. A dislodged piece of turf giving way to a puddle of mud wasn’t just an inconvenience or discomfort. It meant a night spent with a frozen foot and one more addition to the growing sensation that you were rotting from the boots up.

He learned to strip down in the aftermath of rain and let his clothes dry by the elements and not through sapping his body heat. Typically, he’d find some rocks to lay his clothes on and then he’d sit there, next to naked, while they dried.

Sometimes he felt at one with nature and sometimes he felt like a ruined man. His continual worry was what he would do when it was no longer summer and stripping down meant freezing to death.

Hopefully, he’d have found another settlement by then. He’d got out of the forest a few days earlier and since then, he’d covered an unremarkable landscape and had seen no people. There had to be someone, somewhere but whether he found them depended on him living that long.

He’d already used up his meagre stores and his clothes had quickly become worn thin and filthy. He saw animals that he might have hunted but he didn’t have the skills. One day, he rounded a bluff and found himself face-to-face with a mighty stag. He could have reached out and touched him, he was so close. The deer just stood there and looked at him disdainfully, like it was mocking his ineptitude. It looked at him until it grew bored and loped away proudly.

His training on edible mushrooms was especially useless. Most of the time, he didn’t see anything and when he did, he doubted his own judgement and generally gave them a wide berth. What other plants were edible, he could only guess at. He was pretty much limited to familiar fruits and berries which were few and far between.

When he couldn’t find streams to drink from, he drank from puddles and afterwards, got headaches. When he felt the hunger and thirst most keenly, he laughed with bitter irony that the man who’d wanted to feed a town couldn’t even feed himself without the trappings of civilisation.

*              *              *              *

It was a week further on, or he thought it was. He was losing track of days. He’d meant to mark them out and be sure but already he was contradicting himself. He’d decide to count a day, then he’d be sure he’d already done it and then he’d change his mind again. Time had no meaning except the rhythm of day and night and the slow, barely perceptible changing of the season.

His situation was both worse and better. It was worse because the hardships he’d already endured were piling on top of each other. Each was an extra burden to carry. 

It was better because, after aimless wandering, he’d found a stream that bubbled with clear water. Mentally, he named it the Life Blood and he drank deep from it before making camp. There was enough stuff nearby to make a pretty decent shelter and he even had the luxury of a fire.

He stayed there for some days and even learned to catch morsel-sized fish by corralling them into tiny pools and blocking them in with stones. He used up more energy catching them than he probably got from eating them but it was good to feel the taste of meat between his teeth again.

He was tempted to stay forever but he knew it could only be a temporary camp. It would maybe see him through autumn but by winter he’d need proper shelter and that meant finding people. Eventually, he said goodbye to his little camp and started to follow the Life Blood downstream.

*              *              *              *

He kept with the Lifeblood until it joined a proper river. He followed that in the hope it would join another, bigger river. After days though, he found nothing and the going was slower and slower. He still had a supply of water but he could no longer catch his little fish.

With nothing to do but walk and think, his mind shifted violently between missing the township and hating them, between blaming himself and blaming the ones who’d given evidence against him.

As each mood swung to its most extreme, he couldn’t see any way of feeling other than how he felt right then but later, the very same morning, he’d be convinced of the absolute opposite.

The mental effort was exhausting and it drew from what little physical reserves were left in him. One day, he realised he’d been walking the entire morning and had travelled only one bend of the river.

At the apex of the next bend, at the foot of a wooded mountain, he sat by a boulder and decided to lie down to recover. Several hours later, he realised he hadn’t recovered a thing. He had lost something and that was the will to carry on. He was mildly surprised that that didn’t seem to bother him and he lay down to sleep.

18. The Wizard

“What have we got here, then? Some poor creature, I’ll warrant, eh?”

These were the words Unt awoke to. He opened his eyes a slither to see a tall figure standing over him. His eyes were weak and it was grey in the twilight so he couldn’t make out the details. All he got was the definitive impression of fur, horns and a round, mad eye.

He wondered if the vision was a nightmare but couldn’t be bothered to fight it off. He just lay there and let the apparition wander around him, prodding him with a stick and muttering as it went. It was hard work to watch so he didn’t. He hardly felt the bumps and rough treatment. He could barely follow the words.

“My, my, a boy,” it muttered, “And far from home and no mistake. Emaciated, poor thing. Bruises and a fever too. No broken bones though, by the looks of things and no holes in the barrel for the claret to escape.”

“But what to do with him?”

“Never pick up a fallen chick or the mother’ll reject him. That’s what they say. By the state of him, mind, I’d say this one’s been long rejected.”

This two-way monologue was enough to stir something in Unt. “Who are you?” he managed to ask.

The figure leaned back in exaggerated surprise. “It speaks, eh? And why shouldn’t it? You can call me the Wizard lad, aye, the Wizard
.
”

Unt tried to say more but the figure hushed him. “Not now, boy. Not now. Save your strength.”

The man stooped before him and then Unt felt himself being hauled up onto a high shoulder. “Nothing but a bag of bones,” it muttered.

Unt would have resisted if he could but this Wizard person was mightily strong. He carried Unt like he was nothing and without a moment’s pause, he was bearing him up the hill.

Unt’s world became a succession of trees and dried fallen leaves. They flowed backward past him like a river in reverse as the Wizard carried him up the hill. Perhaps they were ascending to heaven, Unt thought, knowing it was absurd. The Wizard was the keeper of the afterlife and he’d come to take Unt to the world beyond.

“Never seen the like,” the Wizard muttered among similar remarks as he propelled them along. Unt recalled a long-forgotten memory of his mother’s warnings not to go off with strangers. Whatever this Wizard’s intent though, Unt was in no position to fight it.

He listened to the Wizard’s breathing close in his ear. Its rhythm matched the dip and rise of his rescuer’s steps and the combination put him to sleep. Unt would let it come, then he’d be jolted awake by an offbeat step. It was a strobing, confusing sleep.

He awoke more fully when the Wizard slowed his pace. Unt opened his eyes and saw a clearing filled with vague, dark shapes that his fevered mind couldn’t make out. He got the impression of a motley collection of sheds but no other people.

Looking up to the top of the clearing, he saw more trees and above that, he saw the narrow, green arc of the tree-line. His mind was still working enough to reason that that line marked the crest of the hill and this camp lay just below it.

Unt could barely lift his head to look around but what he saw suggested organised chaos. The place was full of random debris but it was neatly piled away beside the shapes he took to be sheds. The ground was clear, for the most part. The grass was trimmed or worn short and a rich brown dusting of earth ran through it all.

The Wizard carried him across the clearing and then stooped into a darkened place with a low ceiling. Unt couldn’t see much but he could smell. There was a rank, heavy odour to the place; the accumulation of years of human sweat folded over each other like layers of insulation.

The Wizard dropped Unt from his shoulder and cradled him like a baby. He lay him down on a bed that sat close to the ground. Beneath him, he felt a strange, deep texture; a heavy pile with real substance underneath. It was a sensation that was utterly alien and alarmed Unt but more alarming still was his first real look at his rescuer.

The overwhelming impression was of horns. Two great curling horns sprouted from a skull that rested on his head like some kind of demon. Unt knew it was some manner of head-gear: he wasn’t so far gone that he didn’t realise that, but it was something out of nightmare, all the same.

Those horns framed a pale, severe face with great black eyebrows and wild white hair. It wore an expression half quizzical, half maniacal; frightening in spite of the underlying kindness. It was an old face possessed by a young, vital soul.

The man was draped in a collection of long black, clothing that looked like Councillors’ robes, but unlike those marks of office, these clothes had an industrial look to them. They hung heavily off his tall frame, suggesting a slender build beneath. It seemed a marvel such a man had hauled him up a mountain.

When the Wizard had set Unt down and pulled more of the thick covers over him, he stepped away and returned a few seconds later with a ladle in one hand and a candle in the other. The ladle was made of brass and picked up the candle’s weak light so it had a fire of its own. Those two beacons shone up into the Wizard’s face, deepening the shadows that creased it and giving those creases movement with every flicker of the candle.

The Wizard held the ladle up to Unt’s face. “Drink, lad,” he said.

“What is it?” Unt tried to ask. His mouth was dry and wouldn’t work right but the Wizard took his meaning.

“Just water, son, don’t worry,” he said as he tipped the ladle, sending a little trickle over its brim. The liquid was gold against the brass and as it touched Unt’s lips, it felt like the elixir of life. He hadn’t realised how thirsty he’d been until the cold, wet stuff tracked the dry riverbed of his tongue, right down his gullet.

The second Unt felt that blissful sensation, the Wizard staid his hand and the trickle dried up. Unt moved his lips in mute appeal the way a fish does when pulled from a river. The Wizard pushed him back with a firm, gentle hand.

“No, boy. Not too much at once,” he said and put the ladle aside. He brought the candle up to his face and said, “Right, let’s have a look at you.”

He moved the covers back off Unt and used the candle to inspect him from head to toe. He rolled Unt this way and that, assessing him like some strange curio. Unt felt the prod of cold fingers going heavily about their business.

The Wizard muttered to himself as he went, seeming to address an unseen person, as he had at the river. “No, no. Like I thought,” he said. “No bruising and no cuts - none that mean business, anyway.”

“No meat on him either. I swear you could put your hand on his stomach and feel the ground beneath him.”

He put the candle down on a surface beside Unt’s head. The wax had a puss-yellow colouration. While Unt was transfixed with that, he felt the sudden touch of cold metal in his ear.

He’s going to stick my brains in, thought Unt and put up a hand to ward it off. The Wizard moved the hand aside with pathetic ease.

“Don’t worry, lad, it’s just a thermometer,” he told Unt. Whatever that meant, it didn’t sound reassuring when a stranger shoved one in your ear.

“Hmm. Couple of points above,” the Wizard resumed his self-conversation. “Fever in the making. Thought so, thought so.”

He gave Unt another sip of water and when he’d finished, he moved the covers back but Unt put up a hand to stop him.

“What this?” Unt groaned, moving the cover feebly.

The Wizard arched one of his mighty black eyebrows. “A bed?”

A healthy Unt might have thought the confusion funny but instead he shook his head in frustration. “No. Sheets.”

The Wizard looked at the covers, his face still etched in confusion, but then the meaning dawned. “Ah!” he said, “You mean furs. Don’t you use ‘em, wherever it is you come from?”

Now Unt was confused. “Animal?” he asked.

“Well of course,” laughed the Wizard, “Unless you know some people who are particularly hairy!” He chortled away at that. “Don’t animals have skin where you come from?”

Unt thought of the tannery pits back home where the leather workers used vats of piss and worse stuff to make leather out of the animals that had been killed. His people made use of the dead creatures but they didn't take their skins and wear them to bed.

Unt had never seen a furred creature so big it could make covers like this. It could be a thousand mice pelts sewn together but he doubted it.

He wanted to ask more but the Wizard was having none of it. “Don’t you worry,” he said, “I’m going to take care of you now. Curse whatever beasts in human guise did this to you. They’re all rotten, all of ‘em. But never you mind: the Wizard’s got you now.”

Somewhere as the Wizard spoke, Unt fell asleep.

*              *              *              *

He awoke some time later with the Wizard gently shaking his shoulder. He’d barely opened his eyes when he caught sight of the ladle and felt more water enter his mouth.

A few seconds later, he felt something small, dark and suspect being put on his tongue. “Relax, it’s just raisins,” said the Wizard, feeding with one hand and mopping Unt’s brow with the other.

Unt was wary but as he bit into one of these pellet-like things, he felt it oozing a warm, sugary juice.

It was now that Unt started to register what the rest of his body was feeling. He was both hot and cold. He wanted to bury one half of himself in these furs and he wanted to leave the other half exposed to the refreshing cool of the elements. At the same time, an ache gripped his shoulders and torso, right down to the base of his spine. It was like there were two claws gripping his kidneys.

“Good lad, sleep some more,” said the Wizard and Unt obeyed.

*              *              *              *

The return to sleep brought fevered dreams for Unt. He dreamt a story that played out repeatedly and all the while he felt he was being rolled over and over. He dreamt he’d returned to the town and found it on fire. A volcano had grown out of the ground to the north and down its slope rolled flaming boulders that kept feeding the fire.

He was trying to catch chickens, which would somehow put the fire out, but a woman dressed in indigo with a bandage-covered head sat on a wall and wouldn’t help him, even though she could.

So Unt fought the fires alone and each time he put one out, the rolling feeling within him reset the clock and more boulders poured down the mountain.

*              *              *              *

He awoke exhausted. His naked body was covered with a film of sweat. The furs around him were lined in the stuff. They’d refused to absorb the liquid pouring off him and so he lay in an envelope of his own slick emissions.

His body felt weak but his mind was stronger. The trial of fire in his dream had burnt off the things that had destroyed his ability to reason. There’s no feeling like re-finding what it is to be lucid. There is such optimism and clarity in that space of time and Unt’s new-clear mind told him to take a proper look around him.

Strengthless though he was, he had enough left in him to roll up onto his side. A new candle had been placed beside him but its single flame didn’t penetrate far. More light came from a brazier that burnt on the far side of the room. It was some sort of metal barrel with strips cut out to make a kind of grill. A deep fire burned inside and that fire lit up the sleeping body of the Wizard.

He was sunk in a chair and draped in a fur like the ones that filled Unt’s bed. Unt felt guilty as he realised that he had taken up his host’s own resting place. Dormant, the Wizard had lost his formidable presence, leaving an old man in its place.

The rest of the room was steeped in darkness but Unt could see more hanging furs lining the walls. Those walls were cut straight and even in a long rectangle. Whatever material hid behind the furs, it was cut with a machined exactness. The furs were like an organic skin laid over something artificial.

Some sort of caulking had been plastered onto the ceiling and painted white but the white had yellowed and the caulking had cracked away in places leaving mottled scars. Above the brazier, the white had gone to black, discoloured by long exposure to soot. At a closer look, this blackness concealed a black metal pipe at its centre: clearly an improvised chimney.

Unt now looked at the floor which was a bed of pine needles. Dark green covered light green, covered brown. It was a story of age that suggested the needles were put there regularly and deliberately. What their purpose was - an attempt to capture the forest outside or just convenient flooring - Unt could only guess, but they did bring that sharp pine-tree smell to them that cut through the stench of human occupation.

From Unt’s level, he couldn’t see the furniture clearly but what he could see looked improvised and utilitarian. Tarnished metal crates had been turned into tables and others had cushions across them to become chairs. In a far recess, a metal frame was home to rows of books. They were aged and worn, probably mouldy, but there were more books than Unt had ever seen and they bound in a way he’d never seen before.