Clifford Simak - The Fellowship of the Talisman

It was strange, he thought, that it should affect him so. He had felt nothing like this in the garden skirmish with the hairless ones or in beating off the werewolves. Only a few hours ago he had cleaved the skull of the unsuspecting Robin, and it had been no more than a detail, a necessary job that must be done in the struggle for survival. But this was different. There was nothing personal about this. He was not involved. This was death on a fairly massive scale, the evidence of death and the violence that had brought it on this short stretch of ground between the flatness of the fen and the sharply rising ground.

Here lay the men, he told himself, who had threatened violence and torture to himself and the others with him, and, staring at the small patch of crumpled bodies, he tried to tell himself that he was glad this had happened to them, that it freed him of his fear, that it might even be, in some way, a product of his hatred of them, but he found, surprisingly, that he could not hate the dead.

It was not that he had never known human death before. He had first met it when he was ten or so, when Old Wells had come to his chamber, where he was hiding, and taken him to that great room where his grandfather lay dying. The rest of the family had been there, but he had seen no face clearly except for the hawklike face of the old man who lay upon the bed. Thick, tall lighted tapers stood at the four corners of the bed, as if the old man who lay there might have already died, the flickering light of the tapers doing little to beat back the gloom of death. His Grace had stood beside the bed, draped in his brilliant yet somber robes of office, muttering Latin prayers for the solace and the benediction of the dying man. But it had been his grandfather he had watched, the only one he had really seen, a frail old body surmounted by the fierceness of the hawklike face.

And yet despite the desperate fierceness of the face, a shell-like man, a man made out of wax, a waxen replica of a man already gone.

Conrad touched his arm. "M'lord," he said.

"Yes," said Duncan. "I am sorry. I was thinking."

They walked forward slowly, tramping ponderously, and at their approach the large black scavengers, squawking in outrage at this disturbance of their feast, spread their ragged wings and pumped them mightily to lift their heavy bodies. The smaller birds waited for a time in an attempt to brazen out the intrusion, and then they, too, flew away in a blizzard of whirring wings.

White and empty faces, some of them with the eyes already plucked out of them by the ravenous birds, stared uncomprehendingly at them here and there from the heap of tangled bodies.

"The thing that we now must do," said Conrad, "is find what they have taken from us-your sword, the amulet on which you place so much trust, Daniel's saddles, our blankets, some food for us to eat. And then we can leave this place behind us, thankful that it all is done."

Duncan stopped and Conrad went ambling on, circumnavigating the area of the dead. Meg scuttled about, humped over, resembling in certain ways the scavengers that had flown away, snatching up items that she found lying on the ground. Andrew stood a little way in the rear, leaning pensively on his staff, his peaked face peering out from beneath the cowl. Tiny trotted at Conrad's heels, snarling softly at the tangled dead.

"M'lord," said Conrad. "Please come, m'lord."

Duncan hastened around the heap of dead to reach Conrad's side. He looked down at the body indicated by Conrad's pointing finger. The eyes in the body's head came open and looked up at him.

"The Reaver," said Conrad. "The son-of-a-bitch still lives. Shall I finish him?"

"There's no need to finish him," said Duncan. "He's not leaving here. His last hour is upon him."

The Reaver's mouth worked and words came dribbling out.

"Standish," he said. "So we meet again."

"Under somewhat different circumstances than the last time. You were about to skin me."

"They betrayed me, Standish." The words ran out and the Reaver closed his eyes. Then the words took up again, but the eyes stayed closed. "They said for me to kill you, but I did not kill you."

"And I'm to feel great charity because of that?"

"They used me, Standish. They used me to kill you. They had no stomach for the job themselves."

"Who are the 'they' that you talk about?"

The eyes came open again, staring up at Duncan. "You'll tell me something true?" the Reaver asked. "You'll swear it on the Cross?"

"For a dead man, yes. I'll swear it on the Cross."

"Is there any treasure? Was there ever any treasure?"

"There is no treasure," Duncan said. "There never was a treasure."

The Reaver closed his eyes again. "That's all I needed. I simply had to know. Now you can let that great lout who stands beside you…"

Conrad lifted up his club.

Duncan shook his head at him.

"There's no need," he said. "There is nothing to be gained."

"Except the satisfaction."

"There'd be," said Duncan, "no satisfaction in it."

Andrew had moved up to stand beside them. "Some last words should be said," he told Duncan softly. "Last rites for the dying. I am not equipped nor empowered to do it. But surely some small words…"

The Reaver opened his eyes again, but they did not stay open. The lids simply fluttered, then went shut again.

"Get that sanctimonious bastard out of here," he muttered, his words so low they could scarcely be heard.

"You're not welcome," Conrad said to Andrew.

"One last mercy," whispered the Reaver.

"Yes, what is it, Reaver?"

"Bash in my goddamn head."

"I would not think of doing it," said Conrad.

"I lie among my dead. Help me die."

"You'll die soon enough," Conrad told him.

Andrew dropped his staff, snatched at the club in Conrad's hand, wrested it from him. The club went up, came down.

Conrad stared in astonishment at his empty hand.

"A final word?" asked Duncan. "This is your last rite?"

"I gave him mercy," Andrew said, handing back the club.

They camped some distance up the strand, out of sight of the huddled dead. Night had closed down and from across the fen came the far-off keening. The wind-blown firelight flickered, reaching to the upsurge of the soaring cliffs, to the rim of the far, flat fen.

The fen was a fearsome place, Duncan told himself, sitting by the fire, fearsome in its far-reaching flatness, in its empty loneliness, a stretch of watery wilderness that reached as far as one could see-not a lake, nor yet a marsh, but a place of many little ponds and sluggish streams, separated with rank-growing small groves of willows and other water-loving shrubs and trees. Dropped in the middle of it, a man would be hard put to find his way safely out.

Conrad, sitting across the fire from Duncan, said, "We came out of it well, m'lord. We not only saved our necks, but got back all of our belongings-your sword, the amulet-plus some other welcome plunder."

"I'm sorry about Old Cedric," Duncan said.

"We should have stayed to bury him," said Andrew. "If not the others, at least Cedric. He deserved that much from us."

"We would have done him no great favor," Conrad told the hermit. "No matter how deep we might have dug his grave, the wolves would have him out of it in a day or two."

"It was getting late," said Duncan. "We had only a couple of hours till dark. I wanted to be well up the strand before the sun had set."

Ghost came floating in. He hovered between them and the fen.

"Well, finally," said Andrew, considerably disgusted. "Where have you been all this time? We have been in trouble…"

"In trouble I knew you were," said Ghost. "I came back last night and glimpsed the trouble you were in. I did not show myself, for immaterial as I am, I knew that I, all by myself, could be of no help at all. So immediately I went off in search of Snoopy or perhaps of others of his kind, hoping to summon them to provide what aid they could. But I could not find them…"