Part 6 (1/2)

Shaker Sandow sat with Commander Richter, separated from the other members of the Banibaleer party not by geography so much as by mood. The rest of the men were, if not jubilant, at least relieved and pleased that Mace had spotted the mouth of this cave system where they were now spending the night. It was not exactly warm in the caves, but at least the cutting whip of the wind was killed and a man could finally draw his breath in some fas.h.i.+on close to normal. Richter, on the other hand, was morose. He was so dejected and defeated that his face had taken on more deep lines and his flesh had lost most of its color, so that he seemed ten years older than when he had begun this journey but a few days ago.

For an hour, ever since they had settled into this cold-walled place, the Shaker had been trying to tip the heavy urn of the commander's emotions, to spill the sorrow there and get him to talk, to break his dumb silence. He thought it very likely that they might not survive this trip without the leaders.h.i.+p of this tough and wizened officer. Thus far, the men had followed him, despite rumors of hideous dimensions, and despite reality of some hideousness itself. They had shrugged off disaster and a.s.sa.s.sins to follow. No one else in the party had that quality: not Crowler nor Mace nor, G.o.ds knew, the Shaker. But talking to Richter now was like speaking to stone rather than to flesh and blood.

He had one more tact. He tried it.

'Commander,' Sandow said with more than a trace of loathing and more than a bit of brutality, 'I'm sorry that you've deserted your men and that you care so little for them that you would see them die. I'm sorry I took you for a good officer when you were not. But I can't waste more time with you, for I have to help Crowler pull some things together.' It was blunt, certainly cruel, but it worked. The Shaker was well aware that the commander looked upon his men with a special fondness and that the old man respected the calling of duty to the enlisted men more, perhaps, than the powers of any G.o.d.

'Stay!' Richter said, grasping the Shaker's arm as the magician rose to leave him there in the corner of the second cavern, in shadows and disgrace.

'I have no time to humor old women,' Shaker Sandow said, hating himself for his att.i.tude, even while he realized it was the only att.i.tude he had left to use.

'I'm all right now,' he said. 'I'll take command again. But first, sit with me. Understand me. I must have your trust and confidence in this awful trek, or all will be lost.'

The Shaker sat again, though he kept his face an expressionless mask.

'Before I left the capital, back in the Darklands, some three months before this venture, I was given a special duty by General Dark-whom I've known ever since the wars to liberate the southern regions of Oragonia some forty years ago. He entrusted me with his only son; the General has four wives, and but one of them has borne him other than healthy, lovely girls. The General told me I was the only man he could entrust with the job of making his son into a man. I accepted, for more reasons than to please my friend and General.'

'I fail to see your point yet, unless!'

'Exactly,' Commander Richter said. 'Jan Belmondo was not his name. Our dead Captain was Jamie Dark, son of the General we both owe our freedom and our limited democracy to.'

The Shaker shook his head sadly. Candles flamed up in various drafts in the caverns, sending skittering shadows across the walls. 'But he was such a cowardly boy,' the Shaker said.

'The General did not wish to admit that to himself,' Richter said, 'though he knew it deep inside. He thought, perhaps, I could succeed in giving the boy courage where others had failed. And so Jamie came under my auspices under a false name. He would have come as an enlisted man, except he refused that and forced his father into giving him rank.'

'And now you will be in trouble for his death?' the Shaker asked.

'No,' Richter said. 'The General and I are too close for that. He will know it was inevitable. I will be saddened terribly in reporting this news to the General, for it may mean that he will have no successor to his t.i.tle. Surely, he cannot live long enough to foster another son and have him grown in time to take the reins of state. It is a bad sign for all of the Darklands, not just for the General.'

'It is a great sadness, yes,' the Shaker said. 'But we will survive it, and as we have survived greater moments of tragedy. And, too, one must reason that if the boy would never become a man, it is as well that he has not survived to take those reins.'

'Perhaps,' the commander said. 'But there is more and worse to my situation.'

The Shaker waited. A candle guttered out across the cavern, leaving one group of men in darkness. Someone went to pull another tallow from the supplies, and in a moment there was softly s.h.i.+mmering orange light against that wall again. Someone laughed, and the brightly illuminated group huddled over some joke or other.

'Jamie was the son of a woman named Minalwa, a dark and beautiful woman with large eyes, long hair, and high, full b.r.e.a.s.t.s, with a laugh like that of birds and a voice that was a whisper. The General and I both were in love with her at one time. Perhaps I should have contested his claim. He never realized how I felt, and I'm certain he would have relinquished her if he had understood. But in those days, I wors.h.i.+pped him-still do-as we all did for delivering us from the string of Oragonian tyrants that had made life so terribly miserable for us all. I could not trespa.s.s on his wants. And I lost the woman. In time, however, I discovered that she felt much the same about me, and because our mutual affections led us to foolishness, I got her with child. He was a boy, and his name was Jamie Dark, for his father thought it best to leave the General under the impression Minalwa's baby was his own. Besides saving ill blood, I thought my boy would one day rule the Darklands, which was more of a heritage than I could ever give him. But he became what he was, a coward, and my adultery was punished by the G.o.ds.

'Now, you see, I must cope with the sadness of my lifelong friend, the General. I must cope with my own sadness over the death of my own son. And I must live with the knowledge that I once sinned and that my sinning led to the death of Jamie in the end.'

'One can blame himself too much for things which are beyond the control of men. Sometimes, simple acceptance is all we have.'

'True enough. But sometimes, acceptance requires a bit of time. Will you stay with me, at least in spirit, until this night has given me that time?'

The Shaker said that he would. In the two great caverns, relatively warm for the first time in days, the Banibaleers curled and slept, their bellies freshly filled with warm broth, stale bread, and dried beef.

Outside, the storm grew in fury, into impossible peaks of howling, thundering wind and impenetrable curtains of snow!

12.

They reached the pa.s.s late the next afternoon.

Before making camp, they had descended a good two thousand feet of the eastern slopes. Even standing on the brink of the pa.s.s, so far above the valley where Perdune lay, they could not see the tops of the gigantic mountains around them. Clouds obscured the towering peaks and gave the illusion that there really was no stopping place for them. Two thousand feet down, they found an overhang which sheltered a piece of land from the wind and from the worst of the driving sheets of snow which had become so dense as to almost bar their progress.

The cold had been unbelievable for the last several hours, dropping to forty-one degrees below zero, so that frostbite was a constant danger. The commander would have preferred to move down at least another five thousand feet where it might be as much as thirty and surely no less than twenty degrees warmer. But the men, sapped by the day-long battle with the wind and the cold and the snow which nearly blinded them, could not have managed the descent. There would have been more deaths, and no one wanted to risk that. When the overhang was found, the old man made the decision to remain there, using up all their stores of fuel in the hopes of making it far enough down the next day to be able to survive the following night without fuel.

Fires were built, and special duty rosters were established to take care of them. The windbreakers were strung across the front of the overhang, attached to the jutting rock above and driven into the stone below. The heat was held in where the men huddled, but even so it would be a chilly night indeed.

Commander Richter stopped by the spot where the Shaker and his boys sat bundled together, eating the plentiful meal that Daborot had prepared for them. 'It seems like the last meal before the execution,' the Shaker said.

'I should hope it isn't,' the commander said. 'How are you? The men complain of great tiredness. Tomorrow may take us down most of the way if we don't despair too much.'

'If they let themselves grow weary,' Mace said, 'I'll carry them. I never despair.'

'Yes, a sorrow that we don't all have your foolish cheerfulness in times like this,' Gregor said, grinning at his step-brother.

'I'm pa.s.sing an order that all men will sleep in groups of five or six during the night,' the commander said. 'Each man in his sleeping bag, and each group further wrapped in a length of canvas. We will need all the warmth we have to pa.s.s the night alive.'

'The three of us will be all right together,' Mace said.

'I had thought you would not want anyone else in your wrappings,' Richter said. 'It is just as well. I think the other men may be safer this way, since only two of any five or six could be the a.s.sa.s.sins. And even if they get into the same group, they will be outnumbered.'

'You have,' the Shaker said, 'made plans to separate Cartier from Barrister. And look to Fremlin, the Squealer master, with a sanguine eye as well.'

'You have reason-'

'No reason,' the Shaker said. 'I just trust no one these days.'

'Just as well,' the commander said. Then he excused himself to take a tour of the men. He walked the length and breadth of the camp, missing no one and speaking to everyone on a first name basis. He stopped by each gathering of men for a few words, maybe to exchange a smile or to inquire into the seriousness of a man's frostbite. He spoke with the dignity of his office, though this was tempered with a sense of friends.h.i.+p and mutual dependency as well. In every case, he came to depressed men not anxious to face the morrow, and he went away leaving men the better for his pa.s.sage.

He was tired, worn and unhealthy looking. His face was quite drawn, and his lips were ashen. There was a look of infinite weariness in his eyes, but his lips smiled and his hands were firm as they gripped shoulders and hands in signs of affection and genuine interest and concern. And when he was gone, men were ashamed of their momentary longing for oblivion. If the old man could do it, they could do it. It would be almost sacrilegious to let the old man down after he had brought them all this way. He was risking his life with theirs, and his withered and exhausted frame was no longer young, less able to recuperate than their own bodies. He was tired, worn and unhealthy looking-but he possessed courage that forced his men to live up to the picture he had painted of them.

'He must feel the tons of burden that should be distributed among all of us,' Gregor said. 'With every step, he must feel worse.'

'And conversely,' the Shaker said, 'he feels mentally lighter with each man he consoles. The commander will be able to go as long as his mind is at ease about his men -even after his own body has failed him.'

As the wind swept over the snug threesome, and as the bitter cold of the earth crept inexorably upward through the outer wrapping of canvas through the sleeping bag and finally through his clothes to chill his flesh, Gregor thought about Shaker Sandow, about Mace, and about the future. But thinking about the future engendered thoughts of the past, and he was drawn down long-vacated avenues of his life, like a spirit returning to watch over living friends it has left behind.