Stephen Donaldson - The Power That Preserves

Then Quirrel slowed abruptly and stopped. Triock and Foamfollower caught up with her, found her with another Stonedownor woman. The woman whispered quickly, “Triock, the people are ready. Enemies approach. They are many, but the scouts saw no Cavewights or ur-viles. How shall we fight them?”

As she spoke, Covenant dropped to the ground. He stamped his feet to speed the circulation in his knees and stepped close to Triock so that he could hear what was said.

“Someone among them has eyes,” Triock responded. “They hunt the High Wood.”

“So say the elders.”

“We will use it to lure them. I will remain on this side of the Stonedown-away from them, so that they must search all the homes to find me. The houses will disrupt their formations, come between them. The Stonedown itself and surprise will aid us. Tell the people to conceal themselves on this side-behind the walls, in the outer houses. Go.”

The woman turned and ran toward the Stonedown. Triock followed her more slowly, giving instructions to Quirrel and Yeurquin as he moved. With Foamfollower at his side, Covenant hurried after them, trying to figure out how to keep himself alive when the fighting started. Triock seemed sure that the marauders were after the lomillialor , but Covenant had other ideas. He was prepared to believe that this band of Foul’s creatures had come for him and the white gold.

He panted his way up a long hill behind Triock, and when they topped it, he found himself overlooking the crouched stone shapes of the village. In the unhale dawn, he made out the rough, circular configuration of the Stonedown; its irregular houses, most of them flat-roofed and single-storied, stood facing inward around its open centre, the gathering place for its people.

In the distance, near the mouth of the valley, were the fires of the marauders. They moved swiftly, as if they had the scent of prey in their nostrils.

Triock stopped for a moment to peer through the gloom toward them. Then he said to Foamfollower, “If this also goes astray, I leave the High Wood and the Unbeliever in your care. You must do what I cannot.”

“It must not go astray,” Foamfollower replied. “We cannot allow it. What is there that I could do in your stead?”

Triock jerked his head toward Covenant. “Forgive him.”

Without waiting for an answer, he started at a lope down the hill.

Covenant rushed to catch up with him, but his dead feet slipped so uncertainly through the snow that he could not move fast enough. He did not overtake Triock until they were almost at the bottom of the hill. There Covenant grabbed his arm, stopped him, and panted steamily into his face, “Don’t forgive me. Don’t do any more violence to yourself for me. Just give me a weapon so I can defend myself.”

Triock struck Covenant’s hand away. “A weapon, Unbeliever?” he barked. ” Use your ring.” But a moment later he controlled himself, fought down his bitterness. Softly, he said, “Covenant, perhaps one day we will come to comprehend each other, you and I.” Reaching into his cloak, he drew out a stone dagger with a long blade, and handed it to Covenant gravely, as if they were comrades. Then he hastened away to join the people scurrying toward their positions on the outskirts of the village.

Covenant regarded the knife as if it were a secret asp. For a moment, he was uncertain what to do with it; now that he had a weapon, he could not imagine using it. He had had other knives, the implications of which were ambiguous. He looked questioningly up at Foamfollower, but the Giant’s attention was elsewhere. He was staring intently toward the approach of the fires, and his eyes held a hot, enthusiastic gleam, as if they reflected or remembered slaughter. Covenant winced inwardly. He passed the knife back and forth between his hands, almost threw it away, then abruptly opened his jacket and slid the blade under his belt.

“Now what?” he demanded, trying to distract Foamfollower’s stare. “Do we just stand here, or should we start running around in circles?”

The Giant looked down sharply and his face darkened. “They fight for their homes,” he said dangerously. “If you cannot aid, at least forbear to ridicule.” With a commanding gesture, he strode away between the nearest houses.

Groaning at the Giant’s unfamiliar ire, Covenant followed him into the Stonedown. Most of the people had stopped moving now and were stealthily crouched behind the houses around that side of the village. They seemed to ignore Covenant, and he went by them after Foamfollower as if he were on his way to bait their trap for the marauders.

Foamfollower halted at the back of one of the inner houses. It was flat-roofed, like most of the buildings around it, and its stone eaves reached as high as the Giant’s throat. When Covenant joined him, he picked up the Unbeliever and tossed him lightly onto the roof.

Covenant landed face down in the snow. At once, he lurched sputtering to his knees, and turned angrily back toward the Giant.

“You will be safer there,” Foamfollower said. He nodded toward a neighbouring house. “I will ward you from here. Stay low. They are almost upon us.”

Instinctively, Covenant dropped to his belly.

As if on signal, he felt a hushed silence spring up around him. No sound touched the Stonedown except the low, dislocated whistle of the wind. He felt acutely exposed on the roof. But even this height made him dizzy; he could not look or jump down. Hastily, he skittered back from the edge, then froze as he heard the noise he made. Though his movements were muffled by the snow, they sounded as loud as betrayal in the stillness. For a moment, he could not muster the courage to turn around. He feared to find cruel faces leering at him over the roof edge.

But slowly the apprehension beating in his temples eased. He began to curse himself. Spread-eagled on the roof, he worked slowly around until he was facing in toward the centre of the Stonedown.

Across the valley, light bled into the air through the grey packed clouds. The clouds shut out any other sky completely, and under their cold weight the day dawned bleak and cheerless, irremediably aggrieved. The sight chilled Covenant more than black night. He could see now more clearly than he had from Kevin’s Watch that this shrouded, constant gloom was unnatural, wrong-the pall of Lord Foul’s maddest malice. And he was aghast at the power it implied. Foul had the might to distort the Earth’s most fundamental orders. It would not exhaust him to crush one ineffectual leper. Any purpose to the contrary was mere witless buffoonery.

Covenant’s hand moved toward the knife as if its stone edge could remind him of fortitude, tighten the moorings of his endurance. But a distant, clashing sound, uncertain in the wind, cast all other thoughts from his mind. After straining his ears briefly, he knew that he was hearing the approach of the marauders.

He began to shiver as he realized that they were making no effort to move quietly. The whole valley lay open before them, and they had the hungry confidence of numbers; they came up along the river clattering their weapons, defying the Stonedownors to oppose them. Cautiously, Covenant slid into a better position to see over the edge of the roof. His muscles trembled, but he locked his jaws, pressed himself flat in the snow, and peered through the dim air toward the centre of the village with an intensity of concentration that made his head ache.

Soon he heard guttural shouts and the clang of iron on stone as the marauders rushed to search the first houses. Still he could see nothing; the roof line of the village blocked his view. He tried to keep his breathing low, so that exhaled vapour would not obscure his sight or reveal his position. When he turned his head to look in other directions, he found that he was clenching fistfuls of snow, squeezing them into ice. He opened his hands, forced his fingers to unclaw themselves, then braced his palms flat on the stone so that he would be ready to move.