Hugh Cook - The wizards and the warriors

'They'll all be corpses if this goes on,' said Alish. 'We've seen it before.'

'We have indeed,' said Hearst.

They had seen it happen often enough in the Cold West. There, in the snows, a man who gave up the will to live would be dead overnight. Here underground it was not really cold, but if the men did not eat they would die all the same.

Garash and Miphon stayed sane. They settled into a pattern of meditation which absorbed most of their waking moments. If asked what their mumbled chanting was for, they would say they were maintaining the Balance and building their powers. Blackwood, Hearst, Alish and Gorn moved to the raft the wizards were on; the chanting was better than the unbroken ripplerush of the water.

Every so often, Alish and Hearst would rouse themselves to make a tour of the rafts. Alish would try to encourage the men, and Hearst would curse them and kick them, and warn them the Melski would come and cut their throats. Both tried to get the men to talk, sing, move, fish, eat. When Alish and Hearst were on their rounds, Gorn and Blackwood talked to each other. The wizards hardly spoke at all, but did not seem to be disturbed by the men talking.

'Are you enjoying our holiday?' said Gorn one day, when most other subjects of conversation were exhausted.

'I'd rather work than be idle,' said Blackwood. 'And I don't like this dark wet hole.'

'I used to be a great one for dark wet holes myself,' said Gorn. 'The smaller and warmer the better. How about yourself?'

Blackwood said nothing. i knew a man who liked them old,' said Gorn. 'Hard to believe, isn't it? But that was his fancy. We were together the night we sacked a city in the Cold West. It was a city by a river of ice. He had an old one and I had the youngest. I'll always remember that night, you know. He got rich. He found it was always the old women who had treasure hidden in the safest place. They didn't think anyone would touch them, you see. But they were never safe with him. That's something to remember, isn't it? Look for the oldest face, if you want to get rich. Me, I just wanted to ride them.

'So my friend got rich. Then he fell into a crevasse in a glacier, a crevasse being a crack and a glacier being a river of ice, if you know what I mean. He always said he'd like to die wedged tight in a crack, but I don't think that was the sort he meant. There were those who wondered why I risked my life to climb down to his body, but I knew there was more than one set of jewels hidden in his clothing.

'So I went back to Rovac rich. But I could never settle down. I always wanted… the excitement. The moment just before it all starts, when the blood boils, when it sings in your ears. And afterwards… afterwards… the way their mouths gape. When there's a knife at their throats. I wanted another campaign, not a dangerous one, but just something to give us some fun. So I came to Estar with Alish and Hearst.' 'As a bodyguard.'

'Yes,' said Gorn. 'But Hearst was with us, so I knew there'd be action sooner or later. Soon Hearst was planning a war for the prince. It would have been good.'

Gorn sat in silence, reflecting on how good it had been. Images swam in Blackwood's head, roused by the tales Gorn had told him. White flesh on red velvet. Blood staining satin sheets. Hands of mud fingering, mauling, repressing, while screams thrashed and floundered under smothering weight.

He made himself think of other things.

He thought of Estar. Estar in sunlight, and the blue flowers of spring that bell as bright as the sky. He thought of green grass and baked potatoes, bees and birds on the wing, leaves budding and hot roast meat. If only he could have escaped, if only he could have rescued Mystrel and led her away from the madness at Castle Vaunting into the safety of the Penvash Peninsular in the north…

Mystrel…

It was no use thinking of the past. And, his eyes hot, he told himself that revenge could not alter the past. He wept.

Later, falling asleep on the rocking, rocking raft, he dreamt of thighs, breasts, buttocks, dugs, damp hair, a woman's heat…

He woke to the raft, to the sound of water, to the sound of rafts bumping against rafts; he woke to the damp of a skin of leather against his skin; he woke to a night darker than blindness.

Cold leather.

Cold metal.

What had woken him?

A wave slapped against the side of the raft and spattered his face with spray.

'What is it?' he said. 'Hush,' said Gorn.

Blackwood peered into the darkness. He felt that he had been living in darkness for a lifetime: eating and drinking and dreaming the darkness. Their stomachs were bloated with congealed shadows.

There was another wave. And a smell, a stench like the stink of black mud and rotting vegetation. There was something in the water, and it was huge.

'What is it?'

'Pray to your god if your god can hear you in this place,' said a voice, Miphon's voice. 'Otherwise be silent.'

They were silent.

They listened.

There was a surge of body bulk and a splash. A wave rocked the raft again. Listening, they heard furtive scrabblings and small splashes. They realised those Melski who still survived were coming out of the water.

The raft heaved up.

The ropes securing raft to raft burst. They were thrown up and over to the shock of cold water. Blackwood grappled current in the darkness. He swam, then realised he could as easily be swimming down as up. He was breathless, but let himself float. He began to drift up. So that way was up. He struck out for the surface. Air slapped his face. Breath burst into his lungs. A wave slopped up his nose and a raft clouted him. He grabbed for the raft. Somewhere a scream cried for mother then shrilled into agony.

There was the sound of rending timbers. Then another scream. Snapped off short and bloody. Blackwood hauled himself onto the raft, crawled towards the centre, then bumped full-face into alien skin. He realised there was a Melski on the raft. The next moment, the Melski grappled with him.

His knife was out and in faster than a scream could escape.

He was panting.

There was a rumbling roar from a throat that sounded big as the mouth of a small river. Blackwood lay on the raft, waiting to hear that roar closing with him. But he heard nothing more, nothing but the ripple of water and the small talk of rafts and loose logs discussing their chance encounters in the river flow.

Much later, when Blackwood asked what they had been attacked by, Garash would not say. Miphon said only: 'If there had not been enough of us to more than satisfy its gluttony, we would never have got past it.'

More men died.

Their bodies, weighted with armour to sink them, were thrown overboard. One body woke as it was being searched for valuables; Alish realised that some of his men were now so far gone it might be hard to tell the living from the dead. He checked every corpse himself after that. The last check he did was to bare the chest, make a slit with his knife, then put a finger on the heart to see if there was any movement. He never found any, but at least that way he was sure they were not throwing living men overboard.

A simple burial: a splash, and that was it. No chants, no rites, no songs of remembrance. They could not even see the faces of those who sank away into the darkness.

Finally Alish could no longer bring himself to make the rounds of the remaining rafts. He knew why they were here. They were here because, face to face with Heenmor, Alish had failed to close with the wizard and kill him. Of course, as soon as Alish had stepped forward for the kill, the copper-strike snake would have bitten him – but Heenmor would have died.

Now he was going to die anyway, and, because his courage had faltered at the critical moment, ail the men in his command were going to die as well. Uselessly.