I strained against the bars. They gave slightly, and then resisted. I put all my strength into forcing them. Suddenly, with a loud cracking noise, the whole side of the cage gave way and collapsed with Hans underneath it and me on top.
As we were scrambling free there were sounds of movement from the hut. My eyes were more accustomed to the dark and I saw a figure come out and thought I recognized Jan. My anger had cooled and thoughts of escape were stronger than desire for revenge. We must get to the hole and down the tree. But he had seen what was happening. He gave a yell for help and ran, not in our direction but to the hole.
We could hear others moving, responding to the alarm. In a few moments they would be swarming round us. Even if Jan did not manage to delay us long enough for them to catch us up here, they would be down the tree and after us almost immediately. And they knew the tracks through the forest as I knew the alleyways of Winchester, and were trained and expert runners.
But slight as the chance was, we must try for it. I started to run, then realized Hans was not following. I cried: “This way!” but he was bending over something: a small pack. I did not know what he was doing, except that it must be a waste of time. I went back and tried to grab his arm.
“Come on!”
He shook himself free. There was a smell of oil and he had something in his hands: a tinderbox. Flint sparked against steel and the tinder caught. He thrust a wad of oily rag at it. It flamed, and he tossed it as far as he could toward one of the huts. As it arced, burning, through the air, he lit another wad and threw it in the opposite direction. A new and different cry of alarm came from Jan and the figures that were tumbling from the huts. Fire shot up where the first missile had landed. They ran toward it, and then broke in confusion as a second fire started behind them.
Hans said: “Now, Captain!”
We ran for the hole, which was no longer guarded. I heard shouts but did not look back. Hans had climbed the tree by means of the spikes in its side which the men of the Sky People used, but he had brought a rope with him and made it fast at the top. He wanted me to descend first but obeyed when I ordered him to go. As he slid down I could take in something of the scene. The moss had caught over a wide area in both places where the burning rags had landed. Figures were dashing about and trying to douse the flames with blankets. Then Hans jerked at the rope and I took it in my hands and dropped.
Above us a red circle glowed and opened out, and was followed by another. Bits of burning moss dropped like shooting stars. In their light I could see something of the ground: the kitchens at which the men had cooked food and the spring-fed pool from which they took water. And a pit, a little longer than a man, heaped with charcoal, with blocks at either end that had rounded, lengthwise grooves in them. Grooves in which a stake might rest and be turned like a spit. Sickness and anger rose in me again. I looked up and rejoiced at the spreading fire. The cries were thinner but more anguished. I rejoiced at that, too.
Only when we were clear of the forest, whose whole heart seemed to be consumed in a conflagration that crimsoned the sky like the flaming mountains of the Burning Lands, did I remember the children trapped in it with the rest. Then I felt only sickness, and no more anger.
• • •
I pieced together from Hans the manner in which he had gone about my rescue. I was not missed from the camp until morning, the guard having changed shortly after I spoke to the one on duty. Then Greene instituted a search for me, and closely questioned the people of the village. They claimed to know nothing and when the place had been ransacked it was plain I was not there. Greene searched two more days before abandoning me as lost and taking the troop onward toward the Burning Lands.
Hans, being only a servant and a dwarf besides, could not dispute the decision, but the next night slipped away, taking gold from my pack which, together with the rest of my gear and my sword belt, I had left behind. His only idea then was to make a search of his own, with little notion of how to set about it. But at a village he met a peddler and gave him a good price for his mule and goods and cloak. A peddler could travel anywhere and pick up news.
It was not long before he heard of the Sky People and of their twice-yearly expeditions in search of a victim. Very likely the people in the first village could have told Greene, but had not done so for fear of reprisals from one side or the other. It was safer to know nothing. Hans learned roughly where the village lay and headed for it. The nearer he came the more information he could glean. It was in a village at the edge of the forest that he learned that the Sky People did all their cooking on the ground because the moss they used dried quickly and when dry burned easily: these villagers themselves used it as tinder. In the tree-village no flame was permitted: the moss kept them warm enough even in winter to have no need of fires. Because of this he had brought the tinderbox and oily rags with him.
I said: “You saved my life, Hans.”
“I am your servant, Captain.”
I shook my head. “No longer. Henceforth you are a warrior.”
“A dwarf.”
“That makes no difference.”
“It will in southern lands, in Winchester.”
“Leave that to me,” I said. “I will see to it.”
• • •
We traveled on foot, having too little gold left to buy horses; we sold the mule also to buy food. And extra boots. Because that was the way we crossed the pass through the Burning Lands, carrying water-soaked boots, three pairs each, on strings around our necks, and putting fresh ones on as those we were wearing began to roast our feet. We ran as fast as we could over the smoking black sand, with the boots unlaced so that we spent as little time as possible changing them. I was a near thing, even so. The soles of our last pair were crisped and each step an agony by the time we could discard them and walk, limping and barefoot, down the slope into the valley of black rock.
We bought new boots not in Marlborough but at a village outside. I avoided cities and did not make myself known as we journeyed south. The pigeons would have flown with news of my return and, childishly perhaps, I wished to keep it as a surprise. Fortunately no one would take us for anything but vagrants in the ragged clothes we wore.
So at last we came into the Itchen Valley and saw St Catherine’s Hill, bushy-topped with trees, and a score of other familiar sights; and then the city itself, not towered and domed like Cymru’s, but strong and lovely behind its walls. We came to the West Gate and the guard challenged us. I saw his commander on the step above him: a Captain called Barnes whom I knew well.
I cried to him: “Greetings, John!”
He stared at me.
“Do you not know me? It is Luke. Brought back from the dead by this warrior dwarf of mine!”
He took a step forward but did not speak. Had I changed so much that he could not recognize me, I wondered: not even my voice? I said:
“Will you let me pass to go to my brother?”
“I will do better than that,” he said. He raised his hand.
“Guard, arrest this traitor!”
TEN
THE SWORD OF THE SPIRITS
WHEN I WAS FIRST TAKEN down to the palace dungeons there was a drunken man in the next cell. In between singing and shouting insults at the jailers he demanded to know my name and the reason for my imprisonment. I did not answer him; as far as the latter was concerned I could not. To my own questions Barnes had only replied that I would be told what was necessary when it pleased the Prince to do so.
Later the drunkard was taken away, in a final flurry of oaths and objections, leaving me isolated: my cell was one of a block of four and the other three were empty. I wondered if they had done it from fear that I might use even so unlikely an instrument as that to further my supposedly treasonous activities. It was a relief to be free of the din the drunkard made but the silence that followed, broken only by a drip of water down the wall of the cell, soon became still more oppressive.