Iain Banks - A Song Of Stone

I do believe I have an aim at last; to take you away, with no chattels and no intention of ever returning to the place that's been our home. The lieutenant and her men relieved us of all our fragile goods and our loyalty to the castle's stones, and so cast us together and alone into the free air of flight, at last alive to its pervasive force in all its wayward eloquence. The lieutenant's light fingers might have stolen you from me a little while, but you'll be mine again as you have been before.

Walk me, walk me, wind. Lead by your resistance and take me to my darling one, conduct me to our keep, my perfectly faithless refugee. The ring, I think, stopping.

I should have taken the ring of white gold and ruby that was on the lieutenant's hand, the one she took from you that first day, in the carriage on our way back along this very road. I look back, hesitating.

I hear an engine noise just then, from the direction I've been heading in. I take shelter behind an old fashioned horsedrawn cart lying pushed on to its side by the road, one big, woodspoked wheel raised to the sky. The engine sound comes from one of the lieutenant's trucks, an olive face with a rictus grinning grille and two bright headlight eyes. It charges past my hiding place, trailing clouds of wind caught spray behind, its wheels making a tearing noise at the road surface. The canvas cover over the steel frame flaps and cracks in the slipstream as it roars past. I glimpse men sitting inside, huddled busy over weapons.

I stand out beside the cart, watching over it as the truck races down the road in the direction of the mill. The truck's own wind and shower envelop me, rocking me, until the freshened breeze comes back. I decide I will not be ashamed of the relief I feel now at the prospect of hers. Let them find her; let them rescue her. She deserves no less, I suppose. It was a foolishness to treat her so. The trees behind me creak, some old leaves are scattered up from out of a ditch and another cold gust sways me. makes me shiver.

The truck's brakelights blaze, and it stops, near the distant, canted jeep. Trees between me and the mill bow, slowly, then flex back, and from their dark heads beat black bird shapes.

The truck, made tiny by the distance, reverses closer to the mill. I turn and look west, to the castle, and the rain stings me, wind gusting again. The truck has stopped. Men are jumping down. Then a sound comes from right beside me, and I jump, hand shakily to my back, feeling for the pistol wedged there.

But it is just an old piece of rag, some shred of sacking caught on the wheel of the ancient cart, and catching the wind now, too, and turning the wheel.

I wipe my eyes and watch the small figures running up towards the mill, jumping from the truck, leaping the ditch, vaulting the walls, running across the intervening ground, stopping, leaping, running, running up, the first of them just approaching the doorway of the mill.

Where the wooden arms, though broken, though only half set, though ragged with their holed fabric, still sail their course round now, and free at last salute the passing air.

I turn my back, and run, along, the road at first, then when that turns, still straight for you, heading over fields and through woods, through the cutting rain and choking wind, and see it all and see nothing, forever before my eyes the sight of those wasted windmill arms, saluting and saluting and saluting.

I climb banks, cross fences, wade streams. I am brushed and caught by twigs and branches and dying leaves. Wild animals scatter, birds startle and fly up and after me my breath trails, punctured by the rain, disappearing in its. quiet bombardment. I run and jump and stagger, crashing through branches, hedges and clumps of dormant grass, plunging amongst all the brittle store of winter's promise until I see the castle.

The castle; talisman, emblem, it rises grey on grey from the dripping trees before me, for this moment in the coldly hazing rain looking not like a thing formed from the earth at all, but rather a figment of the cloud, something dreamed from the mistinvested air. I cross the old footbridge by the orchard, its suspended timbers squealing and left jerking on their wires. I pass the walled garden, orangerie, potting sheds, the naked ornamental trees, smashed greenhouses, stoved in cold frames, piles of decaying timbers and small darkened out houses, the ground before them littered with cans, old wheels, sticks and splinters, pots and pans. I run with tired, failing legs and a pounding head and a breathraw throat; I run over the moss upholstered stones, fallen slates, sodden piles of old sawdust, and come out, finally, by the side of the castle.

All looks peaceful. One truck stands before the moat bridge. On the lawns, the refugees” camp gives up a little pale blue smoke that mingles with the rain. I can see nobody. Even the looters seem to have deserted their posts, no longer hanging from the tower and leaving the limply flapping weight of the old snowtiger's skin alone to greet the day.

I fall back into the bushes, my chest heaving, my breath gathering in the air above me while I try to recover some strength and work out what to do next.

The rain, ubiquitous in its interest, drifting unimpeded from the brought down weight of sky, soaks me again and again, dripping from the dark and naked branches, shaken from the few last leaves turned the colours of decay, their ragged shapes like twisted hands, still hanging on, but troubled, disturbed and restless in the visiting wind. Gusts strafe the smoke rising from the tents and make the branches over me clatter and creak.

I haul myself up, and kneel, and soak in the castle's every detail; the rain darkened stones, the scatter of small windows, the hole in the roof where a grey tarpaulin flaps, and on the further tower, that drenched and tattering skin, rain exploding from its striped surface with every gusting wave, and it seems to me that I can take in every chipped and levered stone, see them all spread out in plan and elevation before me, made a diagram of in my mind.

Move., I tell my quivering, exhausted body. Move now. But it needs more, requires longer, still cannot function fully yet. I take out the automatic pistol, as though its steely heft will infect me with its purpose. My hands hurt, my head aches, the rain washing at the wound. My legs grow stiff. I shiver, and gaze with a dazed incredulity at the vapours rising from my legs and face and hands and body, thinking that this steamy veil is like my body evaporating, my determination dissolving in the rain. Then the wind curls and rushes down again and sweeps my self made shroud away.

I scan the castle's windows and battlements for you, my dear, desperate to see your face. Look down, look down, why don't you, and see one the lieutenant would be proud of, see one like her, a murderer now, like her filmy spirit, like a wraith returned, hidden in the bushes with a gun, covered in mud and leaves, by battle and by bullet scarred, and planning an attack and liberation; no natural refugee at all, but rather one become soldier, for you.

Noise grows ordered from the rain's grey hiss, gathering and swelling beyond the castle. I recognise that rising, falling, shifting engine sound, and then hear the truck's horn, flat and blaring, still some way down the drive. I run out from the bushes, stumbling and slipping over the rain slickened grass, heading for the front of the castle and the bridge over the moat. They must have left quickly, summoned on the radio; it could be they all went, and perhaps they left the castle unsecured. I skid on the gravel and almost fall. I run past the truck, over the bridge and into the passageway. The portcullis” iron grid blocks the way; I shake it and try to lift it, in vain. Behind me, I can hear the truck's engine, growing louder.