Another cry, and hoarse shouts. Shaking with fear, Dall started that way, only to run into one of the rocks. He scrabbled back; his foot landed on loose rubble, and he fell, rocks rolling about him and down below, loud and louder. He slid with them, flung out his arms and tried to stop himself. He had scrambled up over a ledge… and now his legs waved in the cold air, his belly lay against a sharp irregular edge, his bruised, skinned fingers dug in.
He pulled himself up a little, panting with fear, and felt around with his use-hand for a better purchase. Then his foot bumped the rock below, and he remembered where the foothold had been. He let himself slide backward, into the air and darkness, and another rock fell from the ledge, bounced loudly below, and hit something that clanged louder than his mother’s soup-kettle.
This time he heard, though he did not understand the words, the angry voice below. He pressed himself against the cold rock, shivering. But his heart hand cramped, and he had to move, and again rocks fell from under his feet, and he lost his grip on the rock, falling his own length in a rattle of small stones to land on something that heaved and swore, this time in words he’d heard before. Hard hands clamped on his bare ankle, on his arm, angry voices swore revenge and stank of bad ale and too much onion… and without thought his heart hand swept forward, and the hand on his ankle released it with a hiss of pain, and with another swipe the grip on his arm disappeared.
“Back!” he heard someone say, panting. “It’s not worth it—” And there was a scramble and rattle and clang and clatter of rocks on stone, and metal on rocks, and shod feet on rocks and someone falling and someone cursing—more than one someone—all drawing away into the night and leaving him crouched breathless and shaking.
He drew a long breath and let it out in a sigh that was almost a sob. Like an echo of his own, another sigh followed, then a groan. He froze, staring into darkness, seeing nothing… he could hear breathing. Harsh, irregular, with a little grunt at each exhalation. Off to his left a little, the way the knife pulled at him now. He took a cautious step, his left foot landing on a sharp pebble—a quick step then, and his foot came down on something soft, yielding.
The scream that followed knocked him to the ground like a blow, his fear came so strongly. Once there he fell asleep all at once, heedless of his scrapes and bruises and the danger.
In the first cold light of dawn, the man’s face might have been carved of the stone he lay on, flesh tight to the bone with care and pain. Dall stared at the face. Longer of jaw than his father’s, it still had something of the same look in the deep lines beside the mouth, the deep-cut furrows of the brow.
Color seeped into the world with the light. That dark stain, almost black at first, was blood—bright red where it was new, the color of dirty rust where it had dried. The man’s shirt had once been white, and edged with lace; now it was filthy, soaked with blood, spattered with it even where it was not soaked. His trews were cut differently than any Dall had seen, fitted closer to his legs, and he had boots—real leather boots—on his feet. They were caked with dried mud, worn at the instep, with scuffed marks on the side of the heels. The dangling ends of thongs at his waist showed where something had been cut away. Dall could smell the blood, and the sour stench of ale as well.
The man groaned. Dall shuddered. He knew nothing of healing arts, and surely the man was dying. Dead men—men dead of violence, and not eased into the next world by someone who knew the right words to say—could not rest. Their angry spirits rose from their bodies and sought unwary travelers whose souls eased their hunger and left the travelers their helpless slaves forever. Such tales Dall’s grandda had told by the winter fireside; Dall knew he was in danger more than mortal, for he knew none of the right words to smooth a dying man’s path.
He tried to push himself up, but he was too stiff to stand up and his ankle—he could just see, now, that it was swollen as big as a cabbage and he could feel it throbbing—would not bear his weight even as he tried to get away on hands and knees.
The man shifted in his blood-soaked clothes, groaned again, and opened his eyes. Dall stared. Bloodshot green eyes stared back.
“Holy Falk,” the man said His voice was breathy but firm, not the voice of a dying man. He sounded more annoyed than anything else. He glanced down at himself and grimaced. “What happened, boy?”
Dall gulped, swallowed, and spoke aloud for the first time in days. “I don’t know… sir.”
“Ah… my head…” The man lay back, closed his eyes a moment, and then looked at Dall again. “Bring water, there’s a good lad, and some bread…”
The incongruity made Dall giggle with relief. The man scowled.
“There’s no bread,” Dall said. His stomach growled loudly at that. “And I don’t have a waterskin.”
“Am I not in the sotyard…?” The man pushed himself up on one elbow, and his brows raised. “No, I suppose I’m not. What place is this, boy?”
“I don’t know, sir.” This time the sir had come easily.
“Are you lost too, then?”
“I—aren’t you dying, then?”
The man laughed, a laugh that caught on a groan. “No, boy. Not that easily. Why did you think—?” He looked down at himself, and muttered “Blood… always blood…” then squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. When he next looked up, his face was different somehow. “Look here, boy, I hear a stream. You could at least fetch some water from there… I have a waterskin…” He patted his sides, then shook his head. “Or I suppose I don’t. It must’ve been thieves, I imagine. Were there thieves, boy?”
“I didn’t see them,” Dall said. Odds on this man was a thief himself. “I heard yells in the dark. Then I fell…”
Now the man’s eyes looked at him as if really seeing him. “By the gods, you did fall—you look almost as bad as I feel. You saved my life,” the man said. “It was a brave thing, to come down on unknown dangers in the dark, and take on two armed men, a boy like you.”
Dall felt his ears going hot. “I… didn’t mean to,” he said.
“Didn’t mean to?”
“No… I fell off the cliff.”
“Still, your fall saved me, I don’t doubt. Ohhhh…” Another groan, and the man had pushed himself up to sitting, and grabbed for his head as if it would fall off and roll away. “I don’t know why I drink that poison they call ale…”
“For the comfort of forgetting,” Dall said, quoting his father.
A harsh laugh answered him. “Aye, that’s the truth, though you’re over-young to have anything worth forgetting, I’d say. You—” The man stopped suddenly and stared at the ground by Dall’s hand. “Where did you get that?” he asked.
Dall had forgotten the knife, but there it lay, glinting a little in first rays of the sun. He reached and put his hand over it. “My sister gave it to me,” he said. “It’s only wood…”
“I see that,” the man said. He shook his head, and then grunted with pain. Dall knew that sound; his father had been drunk every quarter-day as long as he could remember. The man pushed himself to hands and knees, and crawled to the tiny stream, where he drank, and splashed water on himself, and then, standing, stripped off his bloody clothes. There was plenty of light now, and Dall could see the bruises and cuts on skin like polished ivory, marked as it was with old scars on his sides.
While the man’s back was turned, Dall pushed himself up a little, wincing at the pain—he hurt everywhere—and picked up the wooden knife. If it could mend a serpent bite, what about a swollen ankle? And for that matter the bloody scrape some rock had made along his arm? He laid the knife to his arm, but nothing happened. Nor when he touched it to his ankle.