The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) (26 page)

Carle pulled me to a stop. I strained my ears, trying to sense where we were. We had been travelling on the relatively level ground between mountains; I knew this from the number of times that Carle had pulled me back from stepping into fissures. I could hear no whistles coming from behind me, before me, or to either side of me. The wind shifted direction every few seconds. A few autumn birds twittered, but most had flown south at this time of year. Near us, a stone rattled down the side of a mountain.
My head jerked round; then I whispered, "It sounds like a breacher is near."
"We're too far from the pass for that," replied Carle, adjusting the cloth binding my eyes. "Most likely it's a cat."
"A mountain cat?" I tried to keep my voice matter-of-fact. "I thought they only lived in the dominion mountains, except when they're tamed. Do the wild cats travel this far south?"
"They don't come near the pass, but they'll occasionally roam these mountains, away from the pass. Don't worry. You may find that one is following you, but they rarely attack humans, unless the human is wounded. Now, then—" Without warning, Carle took hold of my shoulders and spun me round. By the time he stopped, I was thoroughly dizzy.
"Any idea which direction you're facing?" Carle enquired blithely.
"None at all," I replied, trying to keep from toppling over.
"Good. Now, here's how the test works. I'll leave you here. You count to a hundred. Once the count is over, take the cloth off your eyes and make your way back to the patrol ground."
"That's all?" I said cautiously. "It's just a test to see whether I can navigate through the mountains?"
"You can manage that, can't you?"
"Of course I can," I said quickly, though I was feeling uneasy, remembering Fenton's warning about sticking to the pass.
"Good. Keep in mind, Adrian: this test isn't meant to kill you. I don't want you to make the same mistake that was made by the only guard I know who failed this test. When you find that you can't locate the patrol ground, whistle, and we'll come fetch you."
I was stung by the lack of faith that Carle's "when" represented. "I'll make it back on my own," I said stiffly.
"Good hunting" was Carle's only reply. He said nothing more, and after a minute, I realized that he had left my side.
Taking a breath, I counted aloud to one hundred, keeping my count slow. I could not help continuing to strain for some clue of where I was. If Carle made any noise while walking back to the pass, I missed it. I thought, though, that I could hear the mountain cat, moving on some slope above. I had a sudden, nasty vision of what I must look like to the cat: an eye-bound man, easy prey.
Resisting the temptation to pull the cloth off my eyes, I pulled my sword instead. Perhaps the cat wouldn't recognize the significance of the eye-binding. On the other hand, perhaps the cat wouldn't recognize the significance of the sword either, if she had never encountered humans before. Not until she jumped me would the cat realize that I had a way to defend myself. And by the time I killed her, would her claws have mauled me sufficiently to make the killing mutual? I shivered.
I've been writing all this under a ledge in the tiny gorge where Carle left me. Evening had arrived by the time I removed the cloth from my eyes, and tonight the sky is too overcast for me to see the stars, so I will need to wait until dawn to figure out which direction I should take. I ate a little bit of my food and sipped a mouthful of my water, but I'm saving most of it for tomorrow. Surely I cannot be more than a day's walk from the pass; that's all the time that Carle spent in taking me here.
I haven't heard the mountain cat again. I'm hoping that she never saw me and has gone elsewhere to hunt.
The twelfth day of November in the 940th year a.g.l.
It's noonday; I've paused to rest. I had hoped last night that, by this time today, I would be halfway home – halfway back to the patrol ground. But something has happened that I hadn't anticipated: the sky is still covered with clouds.
I could tell this morning where the east was; the glow in the clouds told me that much. But as the day went on, and the whole sky lit up, even that much became hard to discern. It's not as though I can even see most of the sky; the mountains here are so crowded together that I can only sight the sky directly above me. I had hoped that I might at least be able to tell at noonday which direction was south, since the sun is always slightly to the south at noonday. But even that much information has been hidden from me by the thick clouds.
There has been no rain; I can be grateful for that. Or at least, I thought I was grateful until I realized how far my water flask was depleted. Then I began keeping my eye out, not merely for glimpses of the sun, but for pools of water.
I've seen none. What pools there might be are probably drawn into the fissures, which are so dark that I find myself in continual danger of walking into one unsuspecting.
Perhaps I will have better luck higher up on the slopes.
Trying to climb around the sides of mountains is exhausting and frustrating. I keep running into insuperable barriers: blocks of rock that prevent me from travelling further. Of course, such barriers exist on the mountains alongside the pass too, but the patrol has been doing its work for so many centuries that the guards know where every barrier is located and can pass on that information to new guards. Here I am like an explorer in uncharted areas of the mainland.
I did find a wild-berry bush this afternoon. It was a pathetic thing, shrivelled up from living so far north, but it had a few late-autumn berries on it still, which I plucked and placed in my back-sling. I have enough food and water until the end of the day; after that, I have no idea what I will do. Trap mountain animals? I can't imagine how to make a trap out of the one bit of rope I have, barely long enough to bind a man's hands. And though I'm sure a mainland boy would be taught how to hunt with blade alone, I never was.
I spent a long while this afternoon simply standing still, trying to determine through sound where I was. All I could hear was the wind, and what might have been the mountain cat, moving closer to me from a slope nearby.
The thirteenth day of November in the 940th year a.g.l.
I've run out of water. I'm trying to remember how long a man can stay alive without drinking water.
The clouds still block my sight of the sun today, and they still refuse to drop any rain on me. Perhaps it's just as well; the wind is so chilly now that I regret not having asked to bring a cloak. I barely got any sleep last night, curled up on the cold ground of a cave I found, wondering whether the cat would attack me before dawn.
My toiletry in the morning was exceedingly unpleasant. I miss the patrol's latrine.
I've eaten the last of the berries, doing my best to suck out their moisture. The rest of the food I finished last night. It's not that I've been greedy; it's that the climbing I've been doing is so strenuous. I've been trying to climb high enough that I can see the pass. But the mountains are so high and so thickly clustered together that it's like trying to sight Capital Mountain when you're in the midst of the forest of central Koretia.
I heard the cat again today, her delicate paws sending pebbles down the side of a mountain. I couldn't see her, though. I don't suppose I'll see her until she pounces on me.
And even if I should succeed in killing her before she kills me, what then? I'll likely be so badly mauled that I can't travel any further.
This afternoon, for the first time, I felt the temptation to whistle to the patrol for help. I manfully held back from doing so.
The fourteenth day of November in the 940th year a.g.l.
Another cold night, this time without shelter of the cave. I received no sleep at all.
I must admit now that I am thoroughly lost. For all I know, I've been travelling in the opposite direction that Carle and I came from and have been driving myself deeper into the mountains. There's no way to tell; the day is overcast again.
Am I even within reach of the patrol if I should whistle? Most likely not, if I can't hear their whistles. I haven't heard a whistle since the time Carle left me.
My mouth is very dry.
It's becoming harder and harder to travel; I keep having to pause to renew my strength. I find myself thinking of Fenton – of how Fenton looked when I first met him. Lying on the ground, barely alive . . . Only Felix's urgent ministrations saved Fenton from entering the Land Beyond.
I can see now why the cat hasn't attacked. She's waiting until I'm too weak to be able to fight back. That shouldn't be long.
Now I really am in trouble.
This afternoon, trying to make use of the last hours of daylight, I hurried up a slope in too careless a manner. I slipped. I swear I fell down half the mountainside before I managed to stop myself. I'm bruised from head to toe, and my arm is bleeding. That's not so bad; I've put my face-cloth on it to keep the blood from running out of me. But I think my ankle is broken. When I try to walk on it, my leg gives way.
It is time to admit that I have failed. Even expulsion from the patrol would be better than to die alone here of thirst, or to await the cat's attack.
I sent out the Probable Danger whistle three times but received no reply. Am I too far from the pass? Or is the penalty for failing this test death?
I can't bear the thought of never seeing Carle again.
The fifteenth day of November in the 940th year a.g.l.
I managed, through sheer exhaustion from my tears, to sleep a bit yesterday evening after I whistled my danger. When I awoke a short time later, the clouds were red with sunset.
Carle stood over me, holding a wine-flask.
I sat up and greedily took the flask from him. "Careful," he said, crouching down beside me as I began to swallow the wine. "You'll make yourself sick if you drink too fast. Let me see that arm of yours."
I set aside the flask as Carle undid my face-cloth, washed the wound with water from his other flask, and covered the wound again with his own, clean face-cloth. "Just a scrape," he said. "Now let's look at your ankle."
It took him some time to pull off the boot; the ankle had swollen. He carefully inspected it. "Not broken," he announced finally. "Can you walk on it?"
I tried again, and found that, in the interval since my fall, the ankle had gotten better.
"Just twisted," Carle decided. "It's likely to be good enough to walk on tomorrow morning." He whistled suddenly, turning his head slightly to the right of the direction where I had been heading. From that direction, clear as a birdsong at dawn, came the reply of the lieutenant.
I stared, open-mouthed; then I understood. I had been near the patrol ground all along. The patrol guards had simply refrained from whistling their code during the time I took my test.
I felt the heat of shame cover me then. I had whistled for help – had whistled Probable Danger – simply because I'd twisted my ankle a bit. There was nothing wrong with me at all, aside from being a little bruised and a bit thirsty. I could have lasted the time needed to find my way back to the pass.
"Do you have any of those berries left?" Carle asked as he sat down beside me.
"No, I ate the last of—" I stopped, realizing suddenly how little time had passed since I had whistled. "Carle," I said slowly, "that was no mountain cat following me. It was you. You've been following me since you left me."
Carle raised one eyebrow as he rummaged in his back-sling. "I told you that the purpose of this test wasn't to let you die. What if you had knocked your head on a stone when you fell down this mountain? Someone had to follow you to make sure you'd be all right. —Ah, here we are." He handed me a hard biscuit.
I took it but did not eat it; I was feeling sour in my stomach. I had never been in any danger. Never. I had just let my fears get the best of me. "I'm sorry," I said in a low voice.
"Sorry for what?" Carle enquired as he inspected one of my bruises.
"For failing the test."
Carle rubbed a bit of dirt off my bruise to see it better. "Well, yes, you very nearly did. I was beginning to wonder whether you would whistle for help before you started dying of thirst."
The evening wind, sighing, slid over my skin. The sky was beginning to turn the color of my bruises. A sudden cloud-break showed the stars above me, shining sweetly.
"I was
supposed
to call for help?" I said.
Carle sighed as he leaned back. "Adrian, try to use that quicksilver mind of yours. Why were you punished in the first place? What lesson was it that the lieutenant wanted you to learn?"
I was still for a long while as the night chill settled into the mountains, like lowering mist. Then I said, "All that chattering you did on the way here, about the Chara needing aid in making his judgments . . . You were talking about the test, weren't you? You were saying that I couldn't make it out of the mountains unaided."
Carle shrugged. "Quentin might be able to make it back on his own. We know that Fenton managed it. But for us ordinary men . . . Adrian, there's a reason that the Chara placed twelve patrol guards in the black border mountains, and it's not just so that most border-breachers will back away in terror once they see how many opponents they're facing."
"None of us can survive here on our own," I concluded quietly. For a moment, I saw myself as I had been just a few weeks before, running alone through the mountains, questing alone for knowledge of the Chara's law. And then I saw myself as I now am: surrounded by fellow law-lovers, learning from them, and sharing with them my knowledge of blade-play.
"Come on," said Carle, standing up and offering me his arm. "This is no place to spend the night. I passed a cave below that will shelter us if any exceedingly foolish mountain cat should decide to attack two patrol guards at once."
I let him help me up, feeling no shame now at his assistance. "I'm such a fool," I said.
Carle grinned at me. "You and half the young men who enter the patrol. Why do you think we have this handy test available? You're by no means the first patrol guard to make the mistake of thinking he can hold back breachers on his own, believe me."
"Carle," I said hesitantly, "on our way here, you spoke of one guard who failed the test. What happened to him?"