Author: Darragh Metzger
Category: Literature
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He was aware of the pain before he was fully awake, throbbing through his body as though he had been turned into a drum upon which some cruel giant beat with heavy, sharpened tippers.
He opened his eyes slowly. The world filled with flashing light that seared his eyes and forced them closed again. A low moan rumbled through his head, and he realized it came from his own throat.
Taking a deep breath, he forced his eyes open again. This time, the flashing lights quickly faded, leaving only a filmy, shifting greyness. For a moment, he could not imagine where he could be, and tried out several hypotheses. Was the greyness a silk curtain around a bed?
A veil over his face?
A shroud?
A rush of fear shocked him fully awake, and with complete awareness came reason. If he were dead, he would not feel such pain. Besides, he remembered this greyness, which inspired such dread….
The next moment, memory returned. Ah, yes. The cursed mist. The castle. His stupid flight.
Tears that were due more to fear that he had lost his chance to find the castle than to his pain stung his eyes again, and he fought them down with a curse. He had earned the proper reward for his folly, that was all. The best thing to do now was to assess the extent of his injuries.
Carefully, he willed his right arm to rise; to his relief, it appeared in his sight. He wriggled his fingers, noting scraped skin and a cut along his palm lined with dried blood, but nothing worse. The elbow bent where it should. He slowly brought it up alongside his head, and felt a fresh stab of pain in his shoulder. It faded, however, and he decided it was not broken. Good. Now the left.
He worked his way methodically over the rest of his body, and found no protruding bones, excessive blood, or any other outward sign of major injury. Blood from his knees had seeped through the fabric of his trousers, but it seemed to be from nothing more than cuts and missing skin.
His right ankle worried him more, for he could not move it without considerable pain. His head still hurt abominably, and he was, for the first time since he'd left the camp, tormented by thirst, but there was no help for that.
It took him several tries, but slowly Jean levered himself to his lacerated knees, then pushed himself upright. Pain stabbed through his knees and ankle. He could not walk unaided, he realized, and sank back down with a groan. After he caught his breath, he sat up and looked around for anything that might suggest a solution.
The fog was thinner here. At least down at ground level he could see for several feet around him, though doubtless as soon as he stood upright he would be blinded again.
He lay on a pile of dry, dead leaves, which had probably saved his life. The leaves were doubtless the products of the naked birch beside him, the only tree in sight, which had stopped his headlong fall down the slope.
Not far beyond the tree, the ground seemed to level out. Grass, short and dry, carpeted the ground as far as he could see. His helmet lay nearby; had he secured it as he ought, it might have spared his poor head many of the blows that made it throb so.
A short distance away, he noted a pile of small rocks. Past them, sheer cliffs, like walls of rock, seemed to fade into the distance, lining a single gap between them.
He appeared to be in some sort of ravine. Perhaps if he made his way along it, he would find a way out. Then he could resume his search for the castle.
Jean returned his attention to the tree. Several branches looked dead. Perhaps they were dry enough to break off. If so, he might be able to use one for a walking stick.
He worked himself up the tree until he could reach a branch that looked sufficiently sturdy. After considerable effort and a few blows with his sword, he freed the desired limb and settled gratefully back down to whittle it into a useable form with the better of his two knives.
When he had finished, he carefully levered himself to his feet, using the tree and the crutch for support on either side. His ankle stabbed and bit him, but there was no help for that. He shuffled over to retrieve his helmet.
Bending over proved a mistake; his vision swam as black dots of pain flashed before his eyes. His fingers closed blindly over cool metal and he straightened carefully, breathing deeply until his eyes cleared and the pain eased.
Putting the helm on was out of the question. Even thinking about it caused his head to throb anew. Clutching it by the leather straps, he took a fresh grip on his improvised crutch and, with careful steps, fumbled his way toward the opening in the cliffs. Or, at least, where he assumed it was; once on his feet, he could no longer see through the mist.
He had not gone far when his crutch clattered against something with the unmistakable ring of metal and he almost fell. The improbability of it held him frozen for a split second, unbreathing. Then, as quickly as he dared, he lowered himself to the ground where he could see what he had hit.
A shield, round, with brass caps over the rivets, lay at his feet. Jean turned it over carefully, examining the craftsmanship. He had seen similar pieces before, displayed in a few noble households, or carefully preserved by antiquarians and scholars with whom he had studied. It was of a design that had been widely used by the Moors, to a lesser degree by the Spanish, and had even found its way into the ranks of crusaders from France and England.
But the Crusades were generations past, and even the Moors had not borne such shields for many, many years.
Yet the shield appeared almost new. How had it got here? Had it come from the castle?
Setting the shield aside, Jean looked around for other relics and saw the body. Almost at the same time, the smell reached his nostrils. Dead, but not so long dead that the wind and rain had washed away all the stink. If wind or rain ever touched this place.
He pulled himself along the ground one-handed until he was close enough to examine the remains in detail. The clothes were reduced to a few rags, but the tatters were brightly colored, mostly silk and wool, finely embroidered.
It was not possible to tell how the man had died, but it was clear that scavengers, not time, had stripped the bones. A scale cuirass sheltered what was left of the ribcage, parts of which — the reachable parts — looked well chewed. So did the skull, beside which was a simple steel helm with a nasal piece.
Jean ignored the skull and picked up the helm, his puzzled frown deepening. The metal was bright and unrusted. A few shreds of cloth showed that it had been wrapped. In a turban, perhaps? The Moors did such things, or had done so once. But this style of helm was old, old. No one made them anymore, or had in a hundred years. Just as no one made scale cuirasses like that.
Had this man been a poor wanderer, like himself, who had fallen and died here, lured by the vision of the castle? Perhaps this fellow had been proudly bearing his great-great-grandfather's arms because his family had once been wealthy, but was now too poor to replace it with anything newer.
But would even the best steel keep its burnished shine so long, regardless of how it was cared for?
Surely the logical explanation was that the man was from the castle Jean had glimpsed. Perhaps the garb was ceremonial.
He reached for the cuirass, but quickly lost interest in it when he saw the leather satchel and water skin that lay just beyond. Eagerly, he scrambled over the remains with all the haste he could manage and examined his find.
Both were unharmed; whatever had taken such active interest in the body of the unfortunate Moor had been unable to puzzle out the secrets of their openings. Jean hastily undid the stopper of the water skin and took a cautious sip; sweet, cool water trickled down his parched throat. Without further hesitation, he put his head back and took a long, long pull. He forced himself to stop before his thirst was slaked, however, and carefully restopped the bag.
Pulling the satchel onto his lap, he untied the thong that held it shut, and looked inside. Wrapped in a cloth was what looked like a loaf of bread, though he quickly discovered that it had not held its fr
eshness as well as had the water. A ball of what proved to be cheese of some kind and — praise God — a string of dried figs completed the stores.
Ah, well. Even stale, dry bread was better than nothing at all. The cheese smelled strange and foul to Jean's nose, but it was food. And figs had been a special treat in his childhood. He pulled them out, determined to see if they tasted the way he remembered, and spotted something else underneath. A leather bottle. He pulled it free, released the cork, and gave it a cautious sniff. The unmistakable tang of wine kissed his nostrils, and he beamed happily.
"The Lord provides, even for fools who do not heed His good advice," he said, looking skyward. "Thank You again, God. Here is something that will ease my pain, and perhaps allow me to survive until I can find that castle again. I do not deserve Your kindness, after the way I spat upon the hand You extended to me before, but I thank You with all my heart. Blessed is the Lord."
Heartened, he stuffed his helmet and the food into the satchel and slung it and the water skin over his shoulder before gathering up his crutch and struggling to his feet again. His knees and ankle were still painful, but not beyond what he could tolerate. He was reasonably sure they were not broken; therefore, time would heal them. Or not.
His progress was slow, but he was determined not to stop until he was out of the ravine and could re-establish the direction of the castle. The stone cliffs on either side closed in around him, visible through the thinning mist, until the ravine narrowed to a single path no more than two man-lengths wide. The ground was a mixture of rock and gravel that slipped beneath his crutch at every step and threatened to send him tumbling, forcing him to a pace little better than a crawl. Doubtless this ravine had once been a streambed.
Now and again, he eyed the embankments speculatively. If he were uninjured, he'd have attempted to climb them, to see if they ended just above his line of sight. As it was, he had no choice but to continue in the only direction they provided.
He was aware that he was being driven badly off-course, but saw no alternative. If any hope remained of finding that castle, he must escape his stone prison soon.
But the ancient riverbed continued on its winding way, forcing him farther away from his goal with each crunching, sliding step.
He did not know how far he had come when his knees buckled beneath him and refused to bear his weight any longer. He tried to catch himself on his hands to save his torn knees, but the landing jarred him, renewing the ache in his battered head that threatened to split his skull and filled his vision with dancing stars.
Too tired even to curse, he lay panting, eyes shut. There was no point in pretending any longer. He had lost all chance of finding the direction of the castle.
He dragged himself over the rocky ground and leaned back against the obstructing cliff with a sigh. No amount of determination would allow him to regain his feet until he had rested and eaten. He made a meager supper of a small piece of the dried bread, which crumbled to dust in his mouth, and a bite of the rancid cheese, washed down with some of the wine.
He allowed himself two figs, no more, and sealed the rest back in the satchel. God only knew when he might find food again; he must make it last as long as possible. He drank just enough water to ease his throat, forcing himself to cork the skin well before he wanted to.
He had read accounts of men lost in the wilderness or who had ridden on the Crusades. Many mentioned the torments of thirst and hunger, uncertainty, despair, but not one had conveyed the true effect such things had on the mind. None of them had prepared him for the strange, dreamlike quality of it all. As if none of this were quite real.
"You think too much, my clever Jean," his father said to him often enough. "It is good to be learned, but you cannot learn about living from books. Young men should have adventures." Papa always laughed after he said that. His eyes were merry, and twinkled when he laughed. Jean wished his father were with him now. Nothing ever seemed to daunt his father.
Well, Papa, he addressed the image of his hearty, laughing father, I am having a grand adventure now. And I am learning that I wish very much I was only reading about it.
His eyes drifted shut and he leaned his throbbing head back against the cold stone.
It seemed a lifetime ago that he had left the camp. Perhaps it was; he could no longer quite remember what the passage of time felt like. His thoughts drifted through his mind with the same grey vagueness of the mists themselves.
Perhaps he was still asleep, back at the camp, and all this was part of one of his nightmares. If so, he should seek the meaning behind it, once he awoke.
Perhaps he had simply gone mad.
That sounded more likely, all things being equal. Surely these mists, the sense of unreality, the castle, a recently dead man dressed in the clothes and weapons of a century or more past — surely these were not the products of a healthy, sane mind.
A perfect opportunity for a scholar. I could not have asked for better, surely. He smiled absently at his own perverse wit. I shall now explore the world of madness and write about it for posterity.
He did not intend to sleep, but exhaustion pressed him down, down, until he slipped into unconsciousness.