The Nameless Day. Sara Douglass
Читать онлайн книгу.
surely have been lost.
Thomas could also understand why Bierman and Marcoaldi had chosen to ride in the ox carts. The oxen appeared totally unperturbed by the abyss falling away to their left—at one point where the path had turned right following the line of the cliff face, Thomas had seen the faces of the stolid animals, placidly chewing their cud as if they were strolling through lowland meadow rather than mountain-death trail. The ox carts would surely be as safe—safer—than trusting to one’s own security of footing.
Johan appeared hardly concerned, and Thomas wondered at his words that the morrow would be worse than today.
Sweet Jesu! It got worse than this?
As if Johan had guessed his thoughts, the young man turned slightly as he clambered over a deep crack in the path, and grinned at Thomas.
“Brother Thomas! Have you seen that crag to our left?”
Johan turned enough so he could point to it. “I have been studying it this past hour. If a man was strong enough, he could surely climb that south-western face, don’t you think? Imagine the view from the top! All of Creation stretched out below—”
Now even Marcel had heard enough. “Silence, Johan! We need all our concentration to keep our feet here, not on some fanciful and totally profitless expedition to the top of a piece of rock!”
Johan flinched as if he’d been struck, and he mumbled something inaudible to which Marcel replied equally inaudibly, and the group continued to struggle onwards.
And so, inch by inch, harsh breath by harsh breath, and sweaty hand clinging to rock after rock, they moved forwards through the day, and through the Brenner Pass.
There was no relief, save for brief rest periods, until mid-afternoon, and by that time Thomas thought his muscles would never manage to unclench themselves from their knots of fear and effort. He had believed himself a relatively courageous man, but this trail…
He, as everyone else, let out a sigh of deeply felt relief as the lead ox cart suddenly moved forward far more confidently into a small plateau carved into the side of the cliff.
“We will halt here,” Marcel said. “It is the only place where we can camp safely before the end of the pass.”
“We don’t push on through this evening?” Thomas said.
Marcel gave him an exasperated look. “And you think that you could push through another eight or nine hours of what we’ve just endured?”
Thomas’ mouth twisted in a wry grin, and he shook his head. “I thank God I have made it safe this far. You must have needed to travel very fast very badly to dare this pass.”
Marcel glanced at Marcoaldi and Bierman climbing unsteadily out of the cart. “We all had pressing business, my friend.”
He moved off and Thomas sank down in a relatively dry spot. He leaned his back against the rock of the cliff face and tried to relax his cramped muscles.
Lord God, Wynkyn had done this four times a year? May Saint Michael grant me such courage.
Then he sighed and let his thoughts drift, and, as the guides helped the guards unpack provisions and firewood from the lead cart, drifted into a grateful doze.
They ate about the roaring campfire, talked, ate some more, and then Thomas led the entire group in evening prayers before they retired for as much sleep as they could get on the cold, hard ground. The older men slept in the carts, but Thomas took the blanket offered by one of the guides, and rolled himself up in it, lying down close to the fire. He lay awake a while, cold and uncomfortable, but very gradually he felt himself drifting into sleep, and his last conscious sight was of one of the guards moving among the horses, making sure their hobbles and tethers were secure.
He woke sometime so deep in the night that the fire had burned down into glowing coals. There was complete stillness in the camp—not even the horses moved or snuffled.
He blinked, not otherwise moving, and wondered if this was a dream. The night had such an ethereal quality…
Something moved to one side, and Thomas lazily turned his head.
And then stared wildly as a shadow leaped out from under the rock face and thudded down on his body.
Thomas opened his mouth, although he was so winded—and so agonised—by the weight of the creature atop him that he did not think he could—
“Make a sound, you black-robed abomination, and I will gut you here and now!”
Thomas stilled, his mouth still open, and stared at the face only a few handspans above his.
It was incomparably vile, if only because the creature had thought to assume the face of an angel, but had been unable to accomplish the unearthly beauty of one of the heavenly creatures. The face was vaguely manlike, although the eyes were much larger and were such a pale blue they almost glowed in the fading firelight. Its chin was more pointed than a man’s, and its forehead far broader and higher. Its skin was perfection: pale, creamy, flawless.
But there the beauty ended. At the hairline, among the tight silvery curls, curled the horns of a mountain goat, and when the creature smiled, it revealed tiny, pointed teeth.
“You see only what you want to see,” it hissed, and then shifted its weight slightly. Thomas groaned, for one of the creature’s—the demon’s!—clawed feet was digging into his belly, and another cut through both blanket and robes and pinned his right upper arm so agonisingly to the rocky ground that Thomas thought it might be broken.
“Uncomfortable, friar?” the demon said, and laughed softly. “Waiting for an angel to save you? Well, where is your blessed archangel now, priest? Where?”
“Get you gone, you hound from hell!” Thomas whispered, and the creature lifted its head and tilted its face to the moon, shaking with silent laughter.
As it did so, its features blurred slightly, as if the demon only wore a pretty mask to tease Thomas.
Thomas realised that something truly frightful writhed under that facade.
Suddenly the demon dropped its head so close that its lips touched Thomas’ forehead. “Your God and all your bright collection of saints and angels will not help you now, priest. It is just you and I—”
Thomas fought back equal amounts of nausea and fear, and managed to speak. “In the name of the Father, and the—”
The demon lifted the clawed hand holding down Thomas’ right arm and slammed it over Thomas’ throat, making him gag mid-sentence. He twisted his head from side to side, desperately trying to breathe.
“I ordered you not to speak!” the demon said.
Thomas managed to lift his right arm—Lord God, the pain!—and grabbed at the clawed fingers over his throat, but the demon was the size and weight of a pony, and he could not shift it. Instead, he felt the demon shift its weight so that more of it bore down on the leg on Thomas’ belly, and he almost passed out from the torment.
The demon snarled, and shifted its weight again, easing the pressure on both Thomas’ neck and belly.
“I know what you are doing,” the demon said. “We all know! You think to take Wynkyn’s burden on your shoulders, you think to take his place. You pitiful creature! We have been free too long now to submit again to the seductive songs of the Keeper—”
“Who are you?” Thomas croaked. “Who?”
“Who? Who?” The demon hissed with laughter again. “I, as mine, are your future, Thomas. One day you will embrace us, and throw your God—” he spoke the word as the most foulest of curses “—onto the dungheap that He deserves!”
“I will never betray my God!”
The demon’s mouth slid open in a wide grin. “Ah, Thomas,