The Pleasure of Memory (3 page)

He reopened his eyes in time to see another flash on the road.

The summoned calm promptly deserted him. “Goddamned hell!” he barked.

“By gods, now what?” Gerd screeched behind him.

Beam raced through his options. The cold truth was there’d be no standing and fighting. Not by himself. Where the hell was he supposed to make cover? He might use the bum as a shield, but the man was so scrawny he’d be almost useless for the purpose. There was only one viable option: Flight.

The bastards had already cut off the road to the north, which certainly meant they had the road behind him covered as well. He considered the solid wall of the old forest lumbering along on his right. It was his only hope for escape, the only place offering any semblance of cover. He had to make a run for those trees before they forced his hand.

He grabbed the strap of the heavy, blocky pack and clumsily hoisted it up over his shoulder, and then he started walking. A few dozen yards ahead was a steep swale that dipped away toward the forest on his right, and though a vast thicket of dense brambles lined the bottom, it might allow him to drop out of sight for a few precious minutes as he made for the woods. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

“Gerd,” he said over his shoulder, “Come up here.”

The old bum was loitering a few feet back like a toddler throwing a sulk.

“Gerd!” Beam said, slapping his leg, “Keep up, will you?”

The old man scratched his ribs through a failed patch in his old robe, but only continued his dawdle.

“Goddamn you, Gerd! Listen to me! We need to go!”

“What?” Gerd said, throwing his arms out dramatically, “So the brain fever’s all gone now, is it? You just start barking orders again and old Gerd’ll—”

Beam grabbed the old man’s sleeve and dragged him forward. “By gods,” he whispered, “You listen to me. We’re in danger. Do you understand me? Someone is following us. We have to move quickly. When I give you the sign, I want you to run for those woods over there.”

The vagabond yanked his arm free and threw a finger out toward the forest, yelling, “Them woods over there? What, are you insane? You know what them is? Them’s the Forbidable Forest! There ain’t enough wine in Parhron to get me to go in those—”

Beam seized his arm and dragged him closer. “Damn me, Gerd,” he whispered into his face, “If you don’t shut up and listen to me, I’ll slap those last three teeth right out of your mouth!”

“Four!”

“What?”

“Four teeth, not three. I got one more right here.” Gerd threw open his mouth and jabbed a dirty finger at the rotted half of a rear molar.

“Oh for the love of...” Beam hauled the old man into a paced walk. “I’m not going to argue with you.”

“Well, it ain’t right,” Gerd said as he stumbled along in tow, “It’s insulting not to count all a man’s teeth. You said three, but I got four!”

“Four then! I’ll slap all four teeth out of your mouth if you don’t run for those woods on my command. Do you understand me?”

“All right, already,” Gerd said like an adolescent appeasing a parent, “Being followed, he says. Lordy gods, you meet all kinds out here. Lousy brain fever my ass, you’re just nuts.”

Beam counted out the time it’d take to remove the weapons belt, free his crossbow, span, and load it. Even without cover, he knew he could get a couple bolts off before the savages could apprehend him. If he couldn’t avoid going down, by gods, he’d take as many of the savages with him as he could manage.

Just another few paces and they’d make their break. He plotted the course in his mind: Down the swale, through the brambles, a quick jaunt to a line of shrubs dressing the feet of the forest. Once there, he’d slide behind that particularly large redwood leaning out toward the road and make his stand. He prayed the old bum would keep up.

The vibration announced the attack an instant too late. The arrow slammed his pack from behind. Beam spun away and landed hard on his hands and knees, biting his lip in the process. The weight of the pack nearly pulled his arm out of socket.

“Holy Calina!” Gerd screamed behind him.

“Gerd!” Beam yelled up from the dirt, “Get down here before you get hit!”

“Look at that!” Gerd shrieked, pointing at the fallen pack, “For the love of gods, looky there! That there’s a Vaemysh arrow, ain’t it?”

“Gerd! Get down here!”

Gerd was dancing in the two-track and waving both hands at the feathered shaft as if casting a spell to chase it away. “That’s impossible, ain’t it?” he hollered, “Can’t be no savages this far north! It’s in violation of the treaty, ain’t it? The Allies ain’t gonna like that! They ain’t gonna like that at all!”

Beam crawled forward and grabbed for the man’s ragged robes, but Gerd pulled back too quickly for him to get purchase. Dancing around in the road, shrieking with his arms out and his fingers wiggling their spell at the grasslands, he looked to be in the grip of his own brain fever.

“That ain’t possible!” the old man bellowed, “It ain’t possible! Can’t be no savages in the Nolands! What the hell are you doing? You trying to fool me or what?”

Beam again scrambled for the old man, but the weight of the pack sabotaged the climb back to his feet. He was barely standing when the next volley arrived.

The second arrow whistled in from the southeast, passing perilously close to his shoulder before sailing off toward the forest. The third slugged into the other side of the pack from the north. The impact threw him into a spin. He landed hard on his shoulder. The square pack thudded to the ground a few feet beyond him with a broken strap and two arrows sticking out of it at a perfect right angle.

He grabbed the broken strap and dragged the clumsy pack behind him as he crawled along the dirt rut toward Gerd. The old man was fully in the fits of hysteria now, spinning around with his hands circling the air as he preached the impossibility of savages in the Nolands. Beam was within a foot of grabbing the old man’s leg when the fourth arrow hit.

Gerd’s mania choked off in mid-shriek. He stumbled backward, but didn’t fall. For a moment, he just stood there looking down at the arrow buried in his chest, his terror replaced by a gape of utter disbelief. He looked over at Beam, mouthed something incomprehensible, and then slowly tottered backward. He landed on his back in the trough of the dusty wagon track with the same meaty thud a body makes when dropped into a makeshift grave. Beam knew the sound well.

“Gerd!” he called as he crawled up the length of the old bum’s body, “Gerd!”

The shaft of a Vaemysh arrow rose up from the old man’s chest above a swelling circle of red. Gerd’s eyes were wide and fixed, his mouth agape with all three teeth showing.

Four, Beam corrected himself. Four teeth, not three.

He slugged the dirt. He cursed and slugged it again. He’d been selfish and a fool not to have followed his own instincts and run the bum off at the very get-go. Instead, he’d brought the poor old fool into harm’s way. In that moment, all the ghosts of Beam’s past rushed in around him. Brother Dael and Sawtooth Jack, his Mother and Brilla and Hannible Frick, and all the others now long dead stood staring down at him in the reproachful sunlight, and the collective sense of guilt was nearly crippling. He couldn’t bear another ghost plaguing him now; he was crowded to the point of suffocation already. It seemed as though his life had been a thirty-nine year exercise in remorse and shame and self-reproach.

Another arrow spared him from his suffering. It pounded deep into the pack parked in the dirt at his boots. Beam lurched away from it and in the process rolled over the shoulder of the road and tumbled roughly down the steep bank of the swale. He landed in the brambles a dozen feet below the road. Moments later, he emerged on the far side of the patch in the clearing between the brambles and the forest. A palate of blood and crushed berries stained his hands purple and red. Tiny thorns peppered his fingers and palms, but there was no time to attend to the distress of flesh or clothes.

He cupped the sun from his eyes and looked up at the road. His precious pack was lying up there on the shoulder, as close as thirty feet and as far away as the sun. Gerd’s body rested on its back beside it with a feathered shaft rising up from his chest like a macabre flower, a grim silhouette against the clear blue sky. It was a dark and wretched sight, and yet it served him an instance of blinding clarity. None of those arrows had missed him. None of them were supposed to hit him. The Vaemyn hadn’t intended to kill him at all, only to stop him. If they’d wanted him dead, he’d be up there moldering in the dirt with Gerd right now. They wanted him alive!

Beam’s carefully constructed rules of priority abruptly shifted. Death wasn’t something that worried him overmuch. He didn’t necessarily cherish the notion of entering that dark house, but he also wouldn’t be afraid of it when the time inevitably came. Being captured alive by the savages, however, was another thing altogether. That scenario would never be an option, and no amount of gold in the world could persuade him to risk it.

Surrendering to the faithless truth, he reluctantly bartered his hard won treasure for a beating heart and turned for the forest.

As he ran, he cursed the Vaemyn, cursed the gods, and cursed the horrible injustice of it all. Most of all, he cursed himself for ever having yielded to that most miserable and useless of emotions, joy.

II

A JOURNEY BEGINS

E COULDN’T RUN MUCH LONGER.

Every breath was a knife in his side. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it pulsing behind his eyes. He didn’t know if he was worse for the flight or the shock of being startled into the flight, but in the end, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he’d found himself hostage to a situation he’d vowed long ago never to allow. Until this moment, he’d carefully staged every encounter with the savages. He’d always known exactly where he was likely to find the bastards before he got there, and he’d always had an escape plan.

Until today.

Today they’d taken him completely unaware, the result of the traitorous complacency he’d lulled himself into. Every cut, every bruise, every break he suffered was as good as inflicted by his own hand. And the grand prize for his arrogance was to find himself running at full whip through this strange forest while a little spot tingled in the middle of his back where a well-earned arrow was scheduled to strike.

The canopy was woven so tightly that not a fleck of sunlight could breech it, leaving the forest as dark as night. The giant trees crowded the narrow track, making divergence from this path a practical impossibility. Low branches, spindly and barbed, menaced the trail, reaching for him, slapping at his face and hands, and ripping at his clothes. Rocks and roots swelled up from the dirt where none had been an instant before, confounding his footing and complicating his flight.

A less scientific man might suppose that the elements of this dark forest were working collectively to foil his escape. A less scientific man might wonder if perhaps there were more to the ‘forbidden’ in this forest than he gave it credit. A less scientific man might consider turning back and making tracks for the road, savages be damned.

He gave himself a reprimanding slap.

Don’t be a fool. He slapped himself again. Keep your focus. Don’t you dare unravel now! He slapped himself again, and then once more for good measure. And with the third slap, a root seized his foot.

He vaulted into a sprawling dive, soaring timelessly above the path as the stupidity of his situation passed dreamlike beneath him. Sadly, there was nothing dreamlike about his landing. He hit the ground with brute determination and little cushion.

Dirt and debris settled in a hushed cloud around him. The forest cheered his defeat in deafening silence. Rogue streamers of sunlight sliced through the gritty fog, hanging like ghostly icicles in the settling dust.

He pushed himself to his knees. He spit a wad of bloodied phlegm into the dirt and wiped his gritty mouth across a sleeve. Dirt and blood caked the teeth behind a swelling lip. He sat back on his heels, dragged the hair back from his face, and spit again. He’d never felt so tired, so timeworn, so utterly finished with the whole trip in his long, miserable life. He wanted to lay down in the dirt and sleep, wanted to be done with the whole goddamned thing once and forever. It felt like a debt of exhaustion collected over a lifetime was cashing itself in all at once, and for just an instant, he wondered if maybe the time had finally come to quit the game.

He shook his head clear away the thought. It would be a cold day in the Wyr before he’d quit, and it sure as hell wouldn’t be today. He wasn’t ready today.

Defying the forest's spite, denying his own exhaustion, he climbed back to his feet. The alarm bells were screaming in his head again. He had to run. He couldn’t stop. He pushed himself back into his flight, running harder, driving more fiercely along a winding and hilly path that was so buried in gloom, it was nearly impossible to see.

A mile deeper in, he noticed a change in the forest’s mood. A strange sound now loitered at the periphery of his hearing, something even more portending than the death knell his heart was serving him. He could feel the sound more than hear it, like the vibration of a thunder clap that drops its energy far too close to camp. Maybe it was a mill. Maybe it was a sign of hope, a clearing, perhaps. Maybe he’d be able to find a place to take a stand against the savages. It was going to come to that eventually anyway, to stopping and making a defense. The savages were natural runners. It was just a matter of time before they overtook him.

The path broke abruptly to the right and dropped into a steep pitch. For a sickening instant, he was airborne. He landed too hard. The jar nearly shocked the breath out of him, but he couldn’t wait to be sure. He immediately lifted himself back into the run and raced up the next swell. As he pushed himself forward, he realized the canopy was thinning. Irregular rays of light slashed through the trees here, blinding and unbearable. He was rapidly running out of forest.