Peter Dickinson - Angel Isle

Maja grabbed hold of Rocky’s mane as Saranja took the bridle and started down the slope at a steady jog-trot.

Half way to the trees they passed Benayu and the dog, herding their flock in front of them. The clank of the bellwether’s bell seemed extraordinarily loud in the oppressive silence. Benayu’s face was expressionless. He gave no sign that he’d seen them go by.

CHAPTER

3

It was cool beneath the bridge. Reflections from the late afternoon sunlight rippled across the masonry of the arch above them. The river was low after a long summer. Rocky stood midstream, swishing his tail at flies. The three humans rested on boulders that winter floods had piled against the buttress, Saranja brooding, Ribek listlessly trailing his fingers in the current, and Maja quietly watching them. There was magic coming from both of them, she realized. Ribek was just listening to the water again, but Saranja was different. It was the same thing she’d noticed earlier on—not something she was doing, something that was being done to her. Perhaps it was the same thing Fodaro had started to ask about, a bit of magic she’d found among the warlords. But she hadn’t told them anything about it. That wasn’t like her.

“There’s a strange hawk over the woods,” said Ribek suddenly. “It wasn’t there this morning.”

“Nor were we,” said Saranja. “How…? Oh, the river told…”

Maja didn’t hear the rest of it. Something was happening to her, a sudden intense unease of the spirit, like nausea in the body, not slowly infecting her but suddenly there, a distortion of her place and balance in the world. She had to clutch at the stonework of the bridge or she’d have toppled sideways.

Saranja’s voice.

“Maja! What’s up? That was the sheep-bell. Come along. Are you all right?”

“I think the Watchers have come. Back at the pasture. I didn’t feel them coming. They were just there.”

“Right. Let’s get on with it.”

Maja steadied herself and rose.

The small flock streamed by, bewildered by the speed they were being forced to go, with the dog urging the bellwether along in front and Benayu following at the rear, occasionally whacking a rump with his staff. Saranja stepped out of the trees just as the last rank reached her. Maja followed. Benayu whistled and the dog brought the flock to a halt. He looked no less grim than before, but more in control of himself.

“Maja thinks the Watchers have reached the pasture,” she said.

“I know,” said Benayu tonelessly. “Two of them. If he gets it wrong we’ve got about ten minutes—maybe a bit more.”

“Ribek says there’s a strange hawk over the hillside. The river told him.”

“Wasn’t there before I got under the trees, but from now on…One of them will be looking through its eyes. So you can’t take the horse through the village—stand out like a sore thumb. I should look all right, with the sheep, this time of year. You’re going to have to work your way round under the trees. Up the river till you get to the old ford. Not far. Then…”

His face worked. He waited, eyes closed, until he had mastered himself, and turned to Maja.

“You know when Saranja took the wings off your horse, what you felt then? There’ll be something like that. Stronger, probably. It’ll mean Fodaro’s trying to tackle the Watchers back at our pasturage. The hawk will be looking at that. You should be able to slip across the river then. After that, there’s a track down from the ford to the top of the drove pasture. I’ll know you’re there and come and find you.”

“All right. And good luck, Benayu.”

“Not me who needs it.”

He turned away and whistled to the dog to move on.

The moment came in two waves, the first like a silent thunderclap, electric with horror and power, flinging Maja to the ground. She heard Rocky’s squeal of panic, but it had hardly begun before the second wave drowned it, an immense booming bellow, far louder than any thunder, a shuddering of the physical earth…And then the wind. She was already flat on her face but that was no shelter at all. It tore at her clothing, yanked at her hair, was about to pick her up and blast her away like a blown leaf when Ribek tumbled across her and pinned her down.

And then it was gone. Silence. No, not silence, because even in silence your ears are awake, listening for sound. There was a blankness, a deadness, where that sense of listening should have been.

She hadn’t heard the wind.

By the time she understood what had happened to her Ribek had rolled himself off her and was helping her up. His lips moved. Nothing.

“I’ve gone deaf,” she said, and pointed to her ears. He nodded and tapped his chest.

Me too.

Saranja was gone, and Rocky, but Saranja’s shoulder pack was lying on the ground. Maya pointed at it.

“Where is she?” she mouthed.

Ribek pointed across the stream.

“Roc-ky bol-ted,” he said, mouthing it the same way, so that she could read his lips.

He picked up the pack but she took it from him and in that awful non-sound helped him across the ford. Beyond that they followed a well-marked track, picking their way past fallen trees. He was leaning heavily on her shoulder by the time Saranja met them, leading Rocky, foam-flecked and heaving, though she herself was barely panting.

She pointed to her ears and Maja and Ribek made the me-too gesture. She nodded and said something, gesturing at Rocky, pointing at a gash in a foreleg, then showing them a ring on his harness, slipping it over her thumb and pointing at the wreckage of branches past which they’d just been scrambling. Rocky had snagged the ring on a broken branch and got stuck till she’d come up. She spoke again, finishing with a nod and a shrug. Could be worse. He’ll be all right. Grimly they moved on together.

Benayu came up the track to meet them with Sponge at his heels. His face was gray and haggard as an old man’s. He had clearly been weeping. Ribek moved to put an arm round his shoulders, but he shrugged himself free and started to say something.

“We can’t hear you,” said Maja, automatically.

No doubt they’d all spoken together, but Benayu held up a hand, wait, then moved along the line, pausing briefly in front of each of them to reach forward, touch both ears and murmur something with scarcely moving lips. Saranja. Rocky. Ribek. Maja. Swiftly but gently hearing returned, the crash of a falling tree, shouts and screams from the village below. Acrid smoke reeked in the wind—something down there must have caught fire.

“Won’t the Watchers have felt that?” said Saranja.

“They’re gone,” said Benayu in a choking voice. “Give me your right hands.”

He placed their three hands together and closed his own round them, above and below. His voice steadied, becoming harsh and slow.

“I will help you to find the Ropemaker,” he said. “I promise you this, because I promised Fodaro, but not for his reasons, not for yours. I will do it so that I can take vengeance on the Watchers. I will destroy them, every man and woman of them, because they destroyed him. That is the only thing that matters. If I have to destroy the whole Empire, or give it over to the Pirates, if magic vanishes from the world, let it happen, so long as the Watchers are destroyed and vanish too.”

“I understand,” said Ribek, not simply humoring or comforting, but instantly accepting the impossible vow as sane and serious. Saranja only grunted sympathetically. She knew what it was like to hate. Maja felt differently again. Until now Benayu had been for her and the other two little more than a chance-met stranger, friendly and helpful, whom she expected to thank and say good-bye to soon, and never to see again. Now she and Ribek and Saranja and Benayu were linked together, and were going to have to learn to live and endure with each other in friendship and trust for as long as their task demanded.