Iain Banks: The Bridge

The air grew steadily colder as we climbed. The mares' breath wreathed back around me, thick with the smell of their sweat. The perspiration on my own brow and hands was chill. I reached into my coat for my gloves, and my hand brushed against the thick grip of the revolver in my jacket. I fastened my gloves, drew my coat closer about me, and as I tightened the belt of the garment, was impelled to look again at the bindings and fastenings securing the carriage behind me. In the gloom, however, it was impossible to tell whether the straps still held or not.

The way steepened between the thinning trees; the mares laboured up the rutted track, into the lower reaches of the dark grey overcast, wisps of barely seen cloud mingling with and absorbing thier ghostly white breath. The valley beneath was a formless black pit; not a single light, no fire or movement, and no sound that I could detect issued from its depths. A groan seemed to come from the carriage as we rolled into the enveloping clouds; it lurched as a wheel struck and rolled over a rock in the track. I patted the pistol concealed within my jacket, determining that the groan I had heard was simply that of the carriage's wooden couplings flexing against each other. The cloud grew thicker. The small, stunted trees just visible at the sides of the rough track looked like the dwarfish, deformed sentinels of some phantom fortress.

I stopped in the mist on a level length of the track. The carriage lamps produced, when the flames had steadied, two cones of light which did little to illuminate thp ground far beyond the sweat-slicked, tossing heads of the mares, but the lamps' hiss was somehow purposeful and comforting. In their glare, I again checked the carriage bindings. Some had loosened, doubtless due to the road's many corrugations and stony obstacles. I turned the lamps in their sockets, pointing them forward again once my inspection was completed. Their diffused beams encountered the damp vapour like contrary shadows, obscuring more than they revealed.

The carriage rose through the clouds and out of them, following the increasingly broken surface of the track as it gradually levelled out and straightened, heading through a narrow defile in the rocks where the mists slowly thinned. The lamps on either side of me seemed to hiss more quietly, and their beams became sharper. We approached the saddle of the pass and the small plateau beyond.

The last tendrils of the mist stroked past the gleaming flanks of the horses and the strapped sides of the carriage like nebulous fingers reluctant to let us go. Above, the stars shone.

Grey peaks rose into blackness on either side, jagged and alien. The confined plateau was steel grey under the bright stars; dark shadows spread from the rocks on either side of us where the beams of the lamps struck them. The clouds behind formed a hazy ocean, lapping at the sharp islands of distant peaks rising from it. I looked back to see those summits on the far side of the valley we had left, and when I turned to the fore again immediately saw the lights of the oncoming carriage.

My initial start disturbed the mares, causing them to shy and swerve. I checked them immediately and urged them forward again, calming my foolish heart as best I could and reproving myself for such nervousness. The distant carriage, twin-lamped like my own, was still some way off, at the far end of the flattened crucible which formed the summit of the pass.

I settled the revolver further into my inner pocket and flicked the reins, sending the gasping mares into a slow trot which even on that level surface they struggled to maintain. The opposing set of lights, flickering yellow stars come down to earth, wavered, their approach quickening.

Near the centre of the plateau, in the midst of the boulder-field, our carriages slowed. The road through the pass was broad enough for only a single vehicle, the larger rocks and stones having been cleared to each side to provide a way through the broken terrain. A small passing place, an oval area where a width of road greater than a single carriage had been swept from the surrounding rubble, lay equidistant between my own carriage and that approaching. I was now able to discern the two white horses pulling the vehicle and, despite the glare of the flickering lamps, make out an indistinct figure seated on the driver's box. I reined the mares in, letting them amble slowly forward so that our two carriages would meet at the passing place. My counterpart appeared to anticipate me, and also slowed.

It was at that instant that a strange, unnamable fear gripped me; a sudden and uncontrollable spasm of shivering ran through me, as if an electric charge had struck my body, some lightning bolt, invisible and silent, leaping from that clear, still sky. Our carriages reached the opposite ends of the small passing area. I swerved to the right; the carriage facing me went to its left, so that our teams faced one another, each blocking the other's way. They stopped, even before I and the other driver reined them in. I pulled back, clicking with my tongue, persuading the animals to reverse. The other carriage also retreated. I waved at the shadowy figure on the other vehicle, trying to indicate I would go to the left this time, allowing him to pass on my right. He waved simultaneously. Our carriages stopped. I was unable to determine whether the gesture by the other driver was meant to show he agreed to proceed or not. I pulled the two panting mares to my left. Again the other carriage moved as though to block me, but so immediately that it appeared we had moved simultaneously once more.

Defeated again, I stopped the two mares; they faced their ghostly opposites across a clear space of air which was filled by their joined breaths. I decided that rather than retreat on this occasion I would hold my own carriage steady and wait for the other driver to do so, thus enabling me to pass.

The other carriage remained, quite stationary. An increasing unease caused my whole frame to stiffen. I felt impelled to stand up, shading my eyes from the glare of the sputtering lamps and attempting to see the driver facing me across this short but frustratingly impassable distance between us. I saw the other man rise to his feet as well, for all the world as though he was my own reflection; I would have sworn that he too raised one hand to his eyes, just as I had done.

I remained still. My heart beat quickly within my chest, and the strange clamminess I had experienced on my hands before returned, even within my hide gloves. I cleared my throat and hailed the man on the opposite carriage. 'Sir! If you please, go-'

I halted. The other driver had spoken - and stopped speaking - just at the moment I had started, and then stopped. His voice was not an echo, he did not speak the words I spoke, and I was not even sure that he had spoken the same language, but the tone had been similar to my own. A nervous fury gripped me; I waved violently to the right, he gesticulated at the same moment to his left. 'Right!' I shouted as he too called out.

I remained standing for a moment, unable to pretend to myself that the tremor which ran through me then was any sort of reaction to the physical temperature; I trembled, I did not shiver, and as much to take the weight from my now unsteady legs as to proceed with my just decided course, I sat down quickly. Without looking directly at my opponent - for so I now thought of this person apparently determined to prevent my progress - I took up the whip and cracked it over the mares, guiding them left. I heard no other whip crack, but the pair of white horses facing me reared like my own pair, then swerved to their right, so that the four beasts rushed momentarily towards each other, before they reared once more, forelegs rising, harnesses jangling, heads and flailing legs almost touching. Crying out, standing again, cracking the whip over them, I pulled them back, attempted to pass the other carriage on its opposite side. Again I was thwarted, the carriage facing me seeming to mirror my every action.