In the Eye of Heaven Part 28

"We are safe enough," he began. "It may be Hesperand, but this is just as it happened seven winters past."

"Aye, well it's b.l.o.o.d.y strange," said Berchard.

Coensar nodded. "It is. But we're not likely to change it, so we might as well come to the business at hand." The captain c.o.c.ked his head. "I've pulled you all from your blankets on a night you'd rather sleep than do most things. Yes?"

There was an equivocal grumble from among the men. Waking early was the least of their concerns. The river pounded under his feet. Droplets glistened in beards and cloaks.

"And I'd better have a b.l.o.o.d.y good reason for it, yes? Well, that you may judge for yourselves. I want old Ca.s.sonel," said Coensar. "All of you know that." Men nodded. "Well, I don't mean to wait another day, if I can help it." He drew Keening, the ancient blade sobbing once in the fog. "Ca.s.sonel barred a doorway. I will keep a bridge from him."

The conroi was still. To Durand, it seemed that this kind of thing belonged to the other world: the world of fey castles and green ladies that had left them in the night for this ordinary world of damp bracken and sore bones. Men would speak of this at n.o.ble hearths in all the Atthias. Coensar would block the bridge and fight above the Gla.s.s.

"We will hold Ca.s.sonel at the bridge," said Coensar. His eyes flashed like lanterns. He leaned forward. "We will hold Ca.s.sonel at this bridge, and we will do his old ballad one better!"

Big Ouen nodded to Berchard, and, even as their fierce grins spread through the conroi, Heremund spoke.

"Oh G.o.ds." He stood almost at Durand's elbow, and was looking out through a cage of his fingers. He stood almost at Durand's elbow, and was looking out through a cage of his fingers.

"What?" the captain demanded.

Heremund said nothing. Coensar stepped down from the bridge, Keening still in his fist. "What is the matter?"

The skald stepped from the others, his dark eyes moving. He clawed the cap from his head.

"Sir Coensar, I take no joy in saying it, but I think the Gla.s.s is bridged in two places."

"There's only one one road," pressed the captain. road," pressed the captain.

"I came round on the forest side. Not the main track, but some of them others might know. I came by a bridge at a town. They were calling it Sengreen. It can't be far."

Coensar looked into the mist, staring up the river. "A man is a fool to fight his doom."

Lamoric reached out "It is a bad end to a good idea."

'The storm was fierce out here," Heremund offered. "Perhaps it has fallen."

"This bridge has not fallen," replied Coensar. bridge has not fallen," replied Coensar.

The stiffened lines of the captain's face threw Durand back to his own stupid heroism in the melee, and the lance that put Ca.s.sonel out of the captain's reach.

"Is it stone?" Durand breathed.

Heremund turned. "No. The bridge I crossed was wood. Rude, but solid."

"Durand, what's in your mind?" said Coensar.

Durand took a breath. "We'll take it down, Sir Coensar. Give me a couple of men, and we'll take axes to the thing."

Now Ouen spoke: "Never been a woodsman, have you? It's a cursed long job to hack out enough timber to bring down a bridge."

'There will be a way."

The captain snapped one flat hand between them, and Ouen's answer died on his lips.

"You will have your chance ," Coensar said. "Durand, have your skald friend get you to the bridge, and bring it down." Excitement bared his teeth, and he pointed to Ouen. "And take our woodsman. Put that cursed thing in the river, or we're done for back here."

Durand would pay his debts. "We'll bring it down." Or it would prove to be impossible. Nodding to Coensar, he knotted the green veil in his belt.

"WE ARE GOING to look like fools," Ouen said over the sound of the river. His hair was the greasy dun color of old rope. Each of them was peering up into the mist, hoping the forest was empty. Ouen swayed as his horse struggled on the narrow track. "They'll laugh at Coen, come up the river, and it'll be the three of us, chipping away at a forty-foot span with hatchets. They'll be lucky if they don't burst something." to look like fools," Ouen said over the sound of the river. His hair was the greasy dun color of old rope. Each of them was peering up into the mist, hoping the forest was empty. Ouen swayed as his horse struggled on the narrow track. "They'll laugh at Coen, come up the river, and it'll be the three of us, chipping away at a forty-foot span with hatchets. They'll be lucky if they don't burst something."

Fog billowed. Ouen's grumbling wasn't enough to keep Durand's mind from storms and fallen castle and lost villages. They were still in Hesperand, and the Gla.s.s boiled down below the forest floor.

The trail clung to the high bank where the torn carpet of turf and roots threatened to slump into the gorge. Heremund led, followed by Ouen, with Durand bringing up the rear. Durand's latest carthorse nickered.

"If we can just weaken it enough to make it impa.s.sable ..." Durand said, forcing his thoughts back to the job at hand.

"Aye. Baron Ca.s.sonel and his men come riding up, and there you'll be," Ouen said, "up to your neck in the river, whittling at the piers. Have you got a good sharp knife?"

"What else can we do?" Durand snapped.

"You're young yet. Someday you'll learn that most times there are no good choices. Says in the Book of Moons. Book of Moons. You must take what's handed you with as good a grace as you can manage." You must take what's handed you with as good a grace as you can manage."

"Gentlemen," interrupted Heremund, "the trail cuts down toward the river here." interrupted Heremund, "the trail cuts down toward the river here."

"After you," said Ouen. They followed the track down where the fog hung thick and the river rumbled. Ouen made a playful bow, though Durand saw a trace of his own unease in the big man's face.

Their horses slipped and stuttered down the muddy bank into the gorge, wallowing into a great stream of chill air that slithered down the river's course.

"Host of Heaven," said Ouen.

Ahead, something slapped the water. The sound leapt through the dripping ravine.

Heremund stopped, and then they could only hear the Gla.s.s.

Durand swallowed, and Heremund had just begun to turn- something cheerful forming on lips-when another wet slap sounded. And another. Each smack loud and unnerving in the mist, but Ouen had not drawn his sword, and Durand didn't want to be the first. He did, however, finger the handle of the hatchet. The thing would work as well on men as bridges.

Heremund nudged his horse into a cautious walk. Ouen glanced back, his face incredulous. The sound wasn't particularly threatening, but neither did it respond to any obvious explanation.

They approached a section of stream where the water turned around the shoulder of a hill. Beyond it, something twinkled for an instant in the mist. With the next slap, droplets glittered above the rise. Heremund hesitated, just perceptibly, then urged his horse around the corner.

"G.o.ds," he whispered, for the moment alone. he whispered, for the moment alone.

"What do you see?" asked Durand. Heremund was frozen there. Ouen hopped down from his mount, his big sword flickering from its scabbard. Then he, too, stopped as he turned the corner.

"What is it?" Durand pressed.

When he got no answer-no reaction of any kind from either of the men-he too dropped into the trail and approached the big earth prow. And saw it A heap of rags perched on a molarlike stone that erupted from the green gums of the bank. After a moment the heap twitched into motion, and naked arms slapped a stained tunic across the stone. Durand made out the curve of a round face. It was a washerwoman. Or a girl. Under the glow of the smothered Heavens, he could make out a cheek like a blob of raw dough. She squatted amid a ring of soiled clothes. Her knees were against her chest under a simple green s.h.i.+ft. He could not see her feet. The blue-gray tunic in her hands was stained with something dark. Cloudy tendrils streamed past in the water along the bank.

Abruptly, her squat face turned, and Durand was caught by black glistening eyes set in bruised circles. She had no more expression than a millpond trout.

Suddenly, Durand's sword seemed ridiculous. The mooncalf girl seemed about to run. He set the blade on the gra.s.s and turned empty palms to her. But she started up, round-shouldered and dwarfish. Her first, half-intentional start seemed about to tumble her into the water. "No!" Durand said. He heard Heremund gulp something, but was between the woman and the water-his impulse was to save her.

She shuffled backward. He was very close. Her forehead shone like a hard dome of wax above the doughy shapelessness of her cheeks. But all he could see were her eyes. They were darker than any he had ever seen. It was as though each pupil had dilated to swallow the whole bulging orb. The darkness seemed to stain the whites in viscid rings of brown- inhuman. Her slack lips parted to reveal a pike's white needle teeth.

"Durand!" Heremund hissed. "Back," the girl-creature croaked. "What?" "Ba-a-ck." "Ba-a-ck.""Durand, you must not bar her way!" Heremund whispered.

"Please." The creature wrung the blue-gray tunic between her hands. "Kings. Kings I see. I will tell everything. Ask what you will. I will tell all. Only let me back. Let me back."

"Everything?"

"Durand, no!" Heremund's fingers caught Durand's arm and pulled him hard, nearly throwing him into the water. The instant Durand was no longer between the washerwoman and the water, she s.n.a.t.c.hed up the clothes around her boulder and leapt into the stony shallows at the bank. Somehow, she did not touch bottom, but tumbled in as if the edge film were a thousand fathoms deep.

"What in the name of every Power?" Durand whispered. Heremund made the fist and splayed fingers sign of the Eye. "A Washerwoman." "What?"

"A Washerwoman. We've been lucky." He eyed the high banks of the gorge.

"King of far Heaven! What are you talking about?""It is one of the Banished. Or they are."

"Why would something break its way into Creation just to wash its clothes?"

"Not its clothes. Look to your feet."

He stood on the woman's pale rock. The light was stronger now. Everything was red. He could see the marks of his soles smeared in fresh blood. The boulder was spattered. Its iron stink was up his nose.

"She washes the rags of those soon to die. Some say she's grieving, or playing at it."

Durand glanced around the group, searching for the blue-gray of the creature's tunic but found none.

"She might have told you." Heremund shook his head, still rattled. "She might have told you a lot more as well."

"What do you mean?"

'They say she knows whose clothes she's was.h.i.+ng and how death will come. And they say she can tell you the day she'll beat the blood from your torn surcoat." He shook his head. "Who could live and know such things?"

Ouen stared out over the water, his sword of war in his hands. "Host of Heaven."

"Durand, they say to learn your doom, you need only bar her way to water."

Ouen was moving. "If we are to try this mad plan of the boy's, then we must get to the bridge. No matter what I say, we'll have to try. I, for one, am not wearing the tunic she was beating, and we'd look b.l.o.o.d.y stupid riding back without having clapped eyes on the bridge at all."

"Aye right," Heremund said. "If you get back in your saddle, I'll see if I can't get us to the bridge."

AROUND THE BEND, all three men stared up at a bridge as high and strong as a king's barn. "It's huge," Durand said.

Five fathoms over the water, the flat bed was b.u.t.tressed with ma.s.sive posts and trusses. Durand took a look at the kindling-splitter hatchets they had to work with.

"You know," said Ouen, "we could chop the stone stone bridge down and leave this one stand." bridge down and leave this one stand."

"I should have kept my mouth shut," Heremund muttered.

Ouen looked to Durand. "Your skald friend makes a good point."

Durand clambered up the bank. There must be something: a weak point. But the beams were thick as a wars.h.i.+p's keel, and ten centuries of hooves and iron-shod cart wheels had pounded the deck solid.

Ouen strode out onto the bridge, pacing. Durand could not hear his grumbles, but crouched with the useless hatchet dangling from his hand. Coensar was done for.

Crouched as he was, he pawed hair from his eyes and caught a whiff of something sharp as his hand pa.s.sed close: pitch where he had touched the braces. And suddenly he realized- they'd soaked the bridge with the stuff to keep it from rotting.

"No wonder..."Ouen was pacing. "No wonder what?"

Durand didn't answer, but looked up craftily. "There's an easy way to get rid of a wooden bridge..."

"After the storm? The trails were full of mud. The trees are dripping. We'd be faster chopping."

Heremund climbed out of his saddle, and walked to the bridge beams, bending close, then scratching with a thumbnail.

"They've slathered the oak with pitch."

Ouen blinked at Heremund and Durand, and then the big gold smile dawned. "Coensar might have his chance after all!"

Heremund grimaced. "I guess they can build another when we're gone. They've got forever."

Durand turned to Heremund. 'Try and get a spark. We'll get tinder."

Durand and Ouen split up, raking the trees along the bank for dry wood. Durand crouched-knees in the needles- under a big spruce, ripping rough handfuls of brittle, resinous branches from under the spreading boughs. The spruce twigs would burn, even if everything else in Hesperand was dripping. He carried the p.r.i.c.kly ma.s.s back to the bridge.

Coensar would have his chance.

Heremund was crouched at the bridge, blowing at a bit of fluff in his hands. There was already smoke. "You'd best hurry."

"We'll set the kindling in place on Bower Mead's side of the Gla.s.s. We'll get the horses over the bridge, then we'll fire the tinder and bid the bridge farewell."

Durand shoved the dry branches under the bed of the bridge, and left Heremund to work out the details. Back and forth he went. He could hear Ouen working with his hatchet, gathering larger branches, but he kept at the spruce trees, wagering that the brief hot fire would be enough to get the old pitch to burn.

Soon they had packed the gap between the bed and bank with loose branches. Needle rays picked their way between the branches as the Eye of Heaven burnt away the veils of pink cloud that swathed the horizon. Ouen and Durand led the horses across the high span while Heremund labored under the bridge.

"I hope Ca.s.sonel and his boys're not riding too hard," Ouen said. "I'd hate to meet a squad of knights right now."

'They don't know there's any reason to hurry."

They tied the horses securely within the woods on the opposite bank. Though they would ride the animals back to Coensar the moment the bridge caught fire, if the horses weren't tied, the blaze would surely spook them before anyone could mount.

Heremund shouted from beyond the trees. "Whoa! I think that's got it!" Resinous smoke stung Durand's nostrils.

Forgetting Hesperand for a moment and smiling like boys, he and Ouen trotted out to the bridge. Yellow blades of fire stuttered over the edges of the bed.

Then someone was shouting. "Lord of Dooms, what do you think you're doing?" The stranger's face was leathery, and, though he was tall and straight for a plowman, there wasn't much to him. He stood just at the bridgehead, and he looked from the fire to the two strangers as though they were both mad.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" he swore, and, in a wavering instant, his expression changed from anger to fear. He started to run for help. There would be people enough in the village to stop them and douse the fire before it was properly started. Ouen stumbled through the ragged smoke to catch the man.