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1 - The Ivory Plain |
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2 - The Journey Begins |
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3 - The City of Princes |
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4 - The Mountain Village |
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5 - The Road Divides |
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6 - Comrades in Arms |
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7 - The Pass of Silence |
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8 - The Ivory Towers |
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9 - The Union |
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6 - Comrades in Arms
Chapter 6: Comrades in Arms
Malek, Maxe and Bram sat exhausted on the grass outside the closed mountain. They had shouted at the rocky cliff face and tried to prise open the strata with their daggers and swords. But now the sun was high up in the sky, they had managed to snap the point off Maxe’s sword and they were no nearer to finding the others. The knowledge that they had most of the saddlebags and the ponies added to their distress at believing the others trapped within the mountain with no food or water. Barin lay on the grass only semi-conscious, the gash on his temple showing startlingly red with congealed blood against the whiteness of his skin. His breathing was shallow and laboured.
“So what do we do now?” Bram asked the other three.
Malek looked up at the hot sun then down at the prostrate Barin on the grass and sighed.
“We’d better keep going. We’ll have to tie Barin onto his pony to make sure he doesn’t fall off but I cannot believe that we will not find them, maybe not now, but we have not lost them for ever. I feel in my spirit that it is not part of God’s plan for us. The devil has caused this separation. I say we move on and look for them at the Pass of Silence. They will have to cross the Mountains there if they still live. We cannot go further without them we need Eldar to have this mission succeed. Anyway, who knows, but they might make it to the Pass before us.”
Feeling cheered already, the three conscious warriors prayed together before setting off. They prayed for the Lord’s protection for all of the little party, for Barin’s swift recovery, and asked that He would speedily bring them together again. Then, their spirits raised and voices singing, they helped Barin mount his pony and, keeping him safely on a lead rein they set off on the long trek over the steep Mountains of Anger heading for the Pass of Silence on the other side. The trail over the Mountain was narrow and dangerous, and much longer than any of them had anticipated. The first night they camped under the stars and each of them slept badly. They dreamt of their friends trapped in the Mountain and they woke bad tempered and filled with sadness for the loss of half their party.
The second day passed slowly, the hot August sun beating down on them. Barin wiped the drops of sweat from his forehead with a shaking hand and sighed as he squinted upwards trying to see beyond the glare of the sun over the Mountains. His head ached from the wound on his temple and his cheek was already turning a dark purple. Maxe and Bram had tied him by the legs to his pony and he could already feel the sweat running down his back and legs as he strained to keep his balance. The harsh cry of an eagle caused him to look forward again and he realised that they were finally reaching the summit of the Mountains themselves and the valley that would lead to the Pass. As he watched the eagle, he saw it close its wings tight to its body and plummet to earth rising again with its claws full with a wriggling snake before flying off towards the highest icy peak. Slowly but surely the pony’s hooves trod onward, the air growing colder and thinner as they ascended the steep slopes.
At the end of that day they neared the place where Barin had seen the eagle swoop. They made camp and settled down for the night praying for protection through the darkness before they rolled themselves into their cloaks by the fire and slept. It was just past midnight when Barin woke with a start, his heart thudding painfully, unsure what had woken him. He looked across at Maxe who should have been on watch, but Maxe was dozing with his naked sword across his knees. Then he heard a strange sound of rock being scraped upon rock and sat up swiftly. The grating sound was enough to wake Maxe, who, having glanced at the others sleeping by the fire saw Barin awake and gestured him over. Barin drew his axe and crept over to Maxe’s side,
“Did you hear that sound?” He asked, “Like rock being scraped?”
Maxe nodded and whispered,
“We’d better find out what it is. Come on”.
Together they crept out of the cover of the trees where they had camped and moved as silently as they could towards the mountain path. They heard the sound again as if large slabs of granite were sliding over one another. As they paused Barin nudged Maxe and said,
“Can you smell something bad, like a dead animal?”
“Yes, it smells like the slaughterers yard back at Tavos”.
As they stepped forward again trying to close their nostrils to the smell of rotting meat, Barin saw the slumped body of a human being on the path ahead of them. The body did not move and from it came the rotten smell. Warily they went over and looked at the body. The poor man’s eyes were missing, probably taken by predatory birds, his hands had been trampled on and were mangled terribly. Most of his internal organs either gaped from his open stomach or were missing. Barin remembered the eagle he had seen earlier that day and realised that what he had thought was a snake had been human intestines. His own guts heaved at the realisation. Turning aside he threw up over a small outcrop of rocks.
As he turned back to Maxe, they both heard the strange sound of scraping strata again, and then Barin felt a heavy object press against his feet. He looked down to see the rock he had thrown up on standing next to him. Carefully he took a step away from it and he and Maxe watched in horrified fascination as the rock rolled closer to him. Barin pulled Maxe’s sleeve and whispered in a terrified voice,
“Trolls! We’ve got to wake the others and get out of here.”
They ran down the path back towards the trees and dived under cover before turning to watch as the rock rolled after them for a moment then stopped in the middle of the path. The sickening scraping sound emerged again and they watched with mounting fear other boulders beside the path slowly rise up into the night and become quite distinctly, mountain trolls. They crept noiselessly back to the others, relieved to find them awake and the fire doused with earth. Maxe asked,
“Who knows anything about trolls? Is it true that only daylight stops them, that there is no earthly way of destroying them?”
“I’ve heard that no manmade weapon will kill them. How long is it until dawn?”
Maxe looked up at the sky, there was no sign yet of the changing colours that would indicate dawn.
“At least three to fours hours yet. What shall we do? There are rocks all over the Mountains, there’s nowhere to hide!”
“Stop panicking!” Said Bram sharply but quietly, “trolls cannot climb trees, although I admit that they could gang together and push one over. We need to climb trees and stay absolutely quiet, one sound from us, a cough or sneeze will bring them to us. Thank God they have no sense of smell, otherwise they would be able to smell us out. Now quickly, climb the thickest and densest of trees and hide.”
Malek quickly cut the hobbles keeping the ponies together and sent them off with a slap on their rumps trotting down the path. Each warrior snatched up a water bottle and they scattered, climbing the thickest trees of dense pine they could find. It was not an easy task to climb a densely packed tree where the branches could snap beneath their weight alerting the trolls to their location. Yet they had all climbed trees in their youth and the ability came swiftly back when needed most. Within a few minutes they were all ensconced high up in the dark green fir, trying not to sneeze at the dust and smell of the leaves and bark. Below them they could hear the telltale sound of the trolls on the move, the sliding, grating sound of granite and rock moving, searching for them. Each man clung to his perilous seat desperately, the trolls were not carnivores but they would crush intruders to pulp. The thought of sleep was far from their minds as they sat and swayed with the night breeze, each praying for deliverance.
An hour or more passed and the travellers hung chilled in the branches, ears finely tuned to the echoing sound of the trolls searching. It was with relief that they heard the living rocks move further away down the rocky path. Malek peered down through the fir that obscured his view of the ground and gingerly stretched out a foot to ease the pins and needles. Carefully he lowered his weight onto a lower branch and prepared to climb down. He heard soft rustlings from the other trees as the other warriors began their descent. He had nearly reached the ground and was poised on the bottom branches when he heard the growl. It was a deep throated, angry growl and came from directly beneath him. Malek froze in panic one leg dangling out of the branches then he yanked himself upwards again as swiftly as he could, his arms aching with the effort as sharp teeth snapped at the branches where his feet had been.
“Get back up!” He shouted as he scrambled upwards, “there are bears around”.
The other trees shook madly as the travellers swarmed back up into the topmost branches. The growls of the bear beneath them grew louder and sounded extremely hungry to the weary men as they clung to their precarious perches.
“How many did you see?” Bram called down Malek.
“One, but there could be many more”, he answered.
“If there is only one, couldn’t we kill it?” Maxe called out softly from his tree.
“Too dangerous,” replied Malek, “it would kill us before we had set both feet on the ground. There is nothing for it, we will have to stay here all night.”
As they settled down again, they heard the snuffling and light growls of the bear as it smelt them. Then they heard more growls and knew that the bear had been joined by its’ companions. Suddenly Maxe’s tree shuddered from root to tip nearly dislodging Maxe from his branch. He called out in fear as he felt it shudder again. The bears were rubbing themselves against it, scratching their thick fur hides and were threatening to topple the tree in the process. There was nothing Maxe could do but hang on as tightly as he could.
Soon the bears tired of the scratching game and settled down to fight among themselves. They were awesome, shaggy black mountain bears with sharp, curved claws and razor edged teeth that could tear a man apart. Their growls and fighting cries echoed round the mountains, scaring small nocturnal animals and allowing the warriors no sleep. When two of the bears crashed into Malek’s tree, the young fir bent under the weight of the enormous beasts and dropped Malek from his branch onto the ground a few feet away from the bears. Malek was fortunate in that at first they did not see him, he had time to draw his sword and spear and retreat into the darkness of the thick copse. The bears continued to fight for a few minutes, then one of them threw up its head and sniffed the air turning this way and that until it was facing Malek and scenting him upon the breeze. It growled and roared and the other bears came loping up to join in the fight. Malek swallowed nervously, he was no match for five bears and he was suddenly afraid to die. He shouted for the others to come down and help him. At the sound of his voice, the bears reared up on their hind legs and roared their challenge at him. Then they charged.
Malek fought more bravely than he had ever done in his life. His spear ripped the soft belly of the first bear open and it checked in its onslaught and screamed before falling to the earth. A second bear tore its claws across his left arm causing Malek to drop his spear with a scream of pain, the muscles severed in his biceps. As he swung at the creature with his sword in high right hand, the bear towering above him on its hind legs he heard the battle cry of Maxe and Bram as they swiftly dropped to the ground behind the bears and cut the hamstrings of two of the bears. The fight was vicious and bloody, the remaining bears thrashing the warriors to weary pulp before lucky blows disembowelled the creatures. Barin joined the three on the ground, his pupils still dilated from the concussion he had received the day before. All four of them sat panting on the grass as they thankfully felt the first rays of the morning sun throw its light and faint warmth over the earth.
Once again they washed their wounds and bound up Malek’s ripped arm as best they could. As the first light of dawn was brightening the horizon the threat of the trolls had passed and they allowed themselves time to recover in sleep for a while. When the sun had climbed for a couple of hours they woke, still weary, but they gathered up their few belongings and set off to stumble towards the distant high Pass of Silence in the Mountains above them.
* * * * * * *
Eldar and Shandyke had discovered the joy of bringing a soul to God who they had prayed for constantly for weeks. Rindith, after Eldar’s patient teaching had agreed to say the Sinners Prayer and come to know the Lord. Eldar had taught Rindith the power of baptism and the symbolism it meant and Rindith had laughingly said that he was game for anything. So they took him into the waters of the river and made him kneel on the pebbles. They took him through the prayer and heard him repeat it line by line, watching the happiness flood him as the grace of Christ hit Rindith right in the heart. Then they ducked him under the water and baptised him in the name of the Trinity. When he rose from the water, Eldar spoke with the Lord’s voice,
“You shall be used to bring many to the Kingdom for your love for me is strong”.
Rindith wept as he embraced his friends and said he had never known such joy existed.
As they headed onwards towards the Pass, Rindith drew Eldar aside and said to her with some sadness,
“I will always love you Eldar, but the Lord has shown me that we are not meant to be together, that he has other plans for me. I thank you that you were obedient to the voice of God to bring me to him”.
They hugged with tears in their eyes at the wonder of Rindith’s new birth and turned their faces resolutely towards the Pass.
* * * * * * *
The two groups found each other almost by chance. Eldar and her two companions had gradually begun to climb the steep sides of the valley into which they had fallen in the boat and reached a worn path at the top of the valley at the end of the fourth day of separation. As the clouds cleared at midday they plainly saw the yawning gap of the Pass high above them and decided not to rest at that time but to press onwards.
Malek, Maxe and Bram were exhausted from the fight with the bears. They had all lost blood and were barely able to keep going. Barin, having recovered from his concussion was the only one of the group able to bring down a bird or rabbit with his short bow and cared for the other three as they had cared for him. In consequence, they were moving slower than Eldar and had paused on that fourth day longer than they had meant to. When they doused the fire and packed up to leave, they clearly heard the footfalls of other travellers on the path behind them. Fearing it was robbers and being in no state to defend themselves, the four warriors hid praying they would not be seen. It was with some amazement and delight that they saw the travellers approaching and realised it was Eldar and their other missing companions.
Eldar sent Barin off with Rindith to shoot game while she set about ensuring that all the warriors were made comfortable and a fire lit. When Barin and Rindith returned dragging a young stag with them, they all helped to skin the animal and roasted the meat over the fire, setting some to smoke to carry with them. Eldar encouraged the three weary warriors to eat as much of the venison as possible to build them up and prepare them for the arduous journey still to come. They remained at the top of the valley for two days recovering their strength and praying together before Eldar decided it was time to tackle the Pass and pushed the little party onwards.
Chapter 7