The White Mountains (The Tripods) (14 page)

There was more danger here. The grooms slept on the other side of the horses’ stalls, and while they, too, would have drunk their fill, a disturbance among the horses was likely to wake them. The horse I wanted was the one I had been accustomed to riding with Eloise, a chestnut gelding, only about fourteen hands high, called Aristide. He was a somewhat nervous beast, but he and I had grown to know each other, and I relied on
that. He stood still, only snorting a couple of times, while I freed him, and came with me like a lamb. Fortunately, there was straw on the floor, muffling his hooves. I lifted his saddle from its place by the door, and then we were clear.

I led him down and out of the gate of the castle before saddling him. He whinnied, but I judged we were far enough away for it not to matter. I tucked the top of the pillowslip under his girth before tightening it, and prepared to mount. Before I did so, I looked about me. Behind lay the castle, dark and sleeping; before me the tournament field, the flaps of the pavilions moving a little in a breeze of morning. On my left … I had forgotten about the Tripod, or perhaps assumed that it would have moved away during the night. But it was there, as far as I could see in exactly the same spot. Dark like the castle; and, like the castle, sleeping? It looked as if it were, but I felt a tremor of unease. Instead of mounting and riding down the broad and easy slope, I led him away along the steeper and more difficult path which wound down the side of the rock on which the castle was built, and came out between the meadows and the river. There a line of trees partly shielded it from the view either of the castle or the metal giant standing sentinel among the rushing waters of the river’s other branch. Nothing had happened. There was no sound but a water bird that croaked nearby. I mounted Aristide at last, pressed my heels into his flanks, and we were off.

It was true that, as I had said to Henry and Beanpole, although they might get away and their
absence not be noticed for a day or two, I would be missed much sooner. Even with the tournament in progress, it was likely that a search party would come after me. Because of this, I had taken the horse. It meant I could put as great a distance as possible between me and any pursuit. If they did not find me within twenty miles of the castle, I felt that I was safe.

The horse also gave me a chance of catching up with Henry and Beanpole. I knew roughly the route they must take; they had a day’s start on me, but they were on foot. I was less likely now to be troubled by their being better friends with each other than either was with me. I was very conscious, in the gray light of dawn, of being on my own.

The path led by the riverside for nearly a mile to the ford, where I must cross to the other bank. I had covered about half of this when I heard the sound. The dull clump of a great weight striking the earth, and another, and another. Automatically, even as I glanced back, I was urging Aristide into a gallop. The sight was plain, and horrible. The Tripod had uprooted itself from its post by the castle. It was traveling, steadily and relentlessly, in my wake.

I remember almost nothing about the next few minutes; partly because I was in such an extremity of fear that I could not think straight, and partly, perhaps, because of what happened after. The only thing that comes back clearly is the most terrifying of all—the moment when I felt a band of metal, cold but incredibly flexible, curl around my waist and lift me from Aristide’s back. There was a confused impression of rising through the air, feebly struggling, afraid both of what was to happen and, if I did free myself, of falling
to the ground already dizzily far below me, looking up at the burnished carapace, seeing the blackness of the open hole which would swallow me, knowing fear as I have never known it before, and screaming, screaming … And then blackness.

The sun pressed against my eyelids, warming, turning darkness to a swimming pink. I opened my eyes, and had to shade them at once from its glare. I was lying on my back, on the grass, and the sun, I saw, was standing well above the horizon. That would make it about six o’clock. And it had not been four when …

The Tripod.

The jolt of fear shook me, as I remembered. I did not want to search the sky, but knew I must. I saw blue emptiness, fringed by the waving green of trees. Nothing else. I scrambled to my feet, and stared into the distance. There was the castle, and beside it, where it had stood yesterday, where I had seen it as I led Aristide out of the gate, the Tripod. It was motionless, seeming, like the castle itself, rooted in rock.

Fifty yards from me, Aristide cropped the dewy grass, with the contentment of a horse enjoying good pasture. I walked toward him, trying to turn the jumble of my thoughts into some kind of sense. Had it been imaginary, a nightmare, dreamed as a result of a fall from the horse? But the memory of being plucked up through the air came back, sending a shudder through me. I could not doubt that recollection: it had happened—the fear and despair had been real.

Then what? The Tripod had picked me up. Could it
be … ? I put my hand up to my head and felt hair, and the hardness of my skull, with no mesh of metal. I had not been Capped. With my relief at that came a quick wave of nausea that made me pause and draw breath. I was only a few yards from Aristide and he looked up with a whinny of recognition.

First things first. The castle would be stirring, or at least the servants would. It would be an hour or more before I was missed from my room, but there was no time to waste in getting away—I was still within sight from the ramparts. I took the horse’s rein, twisted the stirrup, and swung up into the saddle. Not far ahead the river boiled across the shallows of the ford. I urged him forward, and he responded willingly. Crossing the ford, I looked back again. Nothing had changed, the Tripod had not moved. This time relief was not disabling, but enlivening. Water splashed against Aristide’s fetlocks. The breeze was stronger than it had been, carrying a scent that tantalized me before I remembered it. A bush with that scent had grown on the island in the river, where Eloise and I had picnicked, where we had been happy and at ease and she had talked of the future. I reached the far side of the river. A track led through fields of rye, flat and straight for a long way. I pressed Aristide into a canter.

I rode for several hours before I thought it safe to stop. The land was empty at the beginning, but later I passed men making for the fields, or already working there. The first I came on suddenly, cantering around a bend marked by a small copse, and I was confused and
apprehensive. But they saluted me as I rode past, and I realized they were saluting the saddle, and the fine clothes I wore: to them I was one of the gentry, a boy taking a ride before breakfast. All the same, I avoided meeting people as far as I could, and was glad when I came out of cultivated land into rough rolling uplands, where I saw nothing but sheep.

There had been time to think about the Tripod—about the amazing fact that I had been caught, and then set free, unharmed, un-Capped, but I came no nearer to a solution. I had to abandon it as one of the incalculabilities that happened with them—a whim, perhaps like the whim that had caused those others to spin around the
Orion,
howling in rage or glee or some other quite different and unfathomable emotion, and then rocket off across the water, away and out of sight. These creatures were nonhuman, and one should not try to give them human motives. All that really mattered was that I
was
free, that my mind was still my own and master, as far as circumstances allowed, of my destiny.

I ate, and drank water from a stream, and mounted and rode again. I thought of those I had left behind at the castle, of the Comte and Comtesse, the knights and esquires I had come to know, of Eloise. I was fairly confident they would not find me now—Aristide’s hooves would leave no trace on the short grass and sun-baked earth, and they could not spare long from the tournament for a pursuit. They seemed very far away, not just in terms of distance but as people. I remembered their kindness—the graciousness and sympathy of the
Comtesse, the Comte’s laughter and his heavy hand on my shoulder—but there was something not quite real about the memories. Except of Eloise. I saw her clearly, and heard her voice, as I had seen and heard her so many times during the past weeks. But the last image was the one that came most sharply and cruelly to mind: the look on her face when she told me she was going to serve the Tripods, and said, “I am so happy—so happy.” I kicked Aristide, and he gave a snort of protest, but moved into a gallop across the green sunlit hillside.

The hills rose higher and higher ahead. There was a pass marked on the map, and if I had traveled right by the sun, I should soon be in sight of it. I drew rein on the crest of a ridge and looked down the slope beyond. I thought I saw a gap at about the right place in the line of green and brown, but everything trembled in a haze of heat, making identification difficult. But there was something nearer which drew me.

Perhaps half a mile ahead, something moved. A figure—two, toiling up from the fold of ground. I could not identify them yet, but who else could it be, in this deserted spot? I set Aristide to the gallop again.

They turned before I got close, alarmed by the sound of hooves, but long before that I had made sure of them. I came to a halt beside them, and leapt off the horse’s back, even now, I am afraid, proud of the horsemanship I had acquired.

Henry stared at me, puzzled, and at a loss for words. Beanpole said, “So you have come, Will.”

“Of course,” I said. “Why, didn’t you think I would?”

I told them nothing of Eloise,
and what had changed my mind. This was not just because I was ashamed to admit that I had seriously thought of staying behind, of allowing myself to be Capped for the sake of the rewards that would follow; though I was bitterly ashamed. It was also because I did not want to talk about Eloise to anyone. Subsequently, Henry made one or two sly remarks which obviously referred to her, but I ignored him. At this time, though, he was still too shaken by my appearance to say much.

It sounded sensible and well-planned, the way I told it—that I had thought it best to give them twenty-four hours’ start, and then steal a horse and follow them: this gave us all the greatest chance of getting away. I did tell them of my experience with the Tripod. I thought they
might be able to cast some light on it, that Beanpole, at least, would be able to work out a theory to account for it, but they were as much at a loss as I was. Beanpole was anxious that I should try to remember if I had actually been taken inside the Tripod, and what it had been like, but of course I could not.

It was Beanpole who said that Aristide must go. I had not thought about this, except in a hazy way of imagining that, if I found the other two again, I could generously let them have turns in riding him, myself remaining his proprietor. But it was true, as Beanpole pointed out, that three boys and a horse, unlike three boys on foot or a single boy on a horse, presented a picture that posed questions in the mind of any who saw them.

Reluctantly, I accepted the fact that I could not keep him. We took off his saddle, because it had the arms of the Tour Rouge stamped on it, and hid it behind a ridge of rock, kicking dirt and piling stones over it to conceal it to some extent. It would be found eventually, but not as soon as Aristide was likely to be. He was a fine horse, and whoever came across him, running free and without harness, might not search too far for an owner. I freed him from his bridle, and he tossed his head, at liberty. Then I gave him a sharp slap on the haunch. He reared, went a few yards, and halted, looking back at me. I thought he was unwilling to leave me, and tried to think of some excuse for keeping him a while longer, but he whinnied, tossed his head again, and trotted away to the north. I turned my head, not wanting to see him go.

So we set off, once more on our way, the three of us once more together. I was very glad of their company, and held my tongue even when Henry, by now recovered, made a few slighting remarks about how hard this must be after the life of luxury which I had enjoyed at the castle. In fact, Beanpole intervened, stopping him. Beanpole, it seemed to me, was taking it for granted that, insofar as there was a leader in our little group, it was he. I did not feel like challenging that, either, at least not at the moment.

I did find the walking tiring—the muscles one used were quite different from those used in riding, and there was no doubt that I was out of condition, as a result of my illness and the protracted indolent convalescence that had followed it. I gritted my teeth, though, and kept up with the others, trying not to show fatigue. But I was glad when Beanpole called a halt for a meal and rest.

That night, too, when we slept out under the stars, with the hard earth under me instead of the down-filled mattress to which I had grown accustomed, I could not help feeling a little sorry for myself. But I was so tired, having had no sleep the night before, that I did not stay long awake. In the morning, though, every individual limb felt sore, as though someone had been kicking me all night long. The day was bright again, and still, without the breeze that had cooled us yesterday. This would be the fourth, the next to last day of the tournament. There would be the mêlée, and riding at the ring. Eloise would still be wearing her crown, awarding prizes to the victors. And after tomorrow …