He roused himself briefly, and looked around him again. “Erasmus, where are the fiends? They’re the key to the treasure. They guard it.”
“Maybe they do,” said Darwin soothingly. “You rest now. They’ll be back. It must be as big a shock to them as it was to us—more, because they had no warning that we’d be here.”
Darwin paused and shook his head. There was an annoying ringing in his ears, as though they were still filled with fell water from the underground pool.
“I’ll keep watch for them, Jacob,” he went on. “And if I can, I’ll ask them about the treasure.”
“Wake me before you do that,” said Pole. He settled back and closed his eyes. Then he cracked one open again and peered at Darwin from under the lowered lid. “Remember, Erasmus—keep your hands off the fillies.” He lay back with a contented smile.
Darwin bristled, then also smiled. Jacob was on the mend. He sat down again by the fire, ears still buzzing and singing, and began to look in more detail at the contents of the medical chest.
When the fiend returned he gave Darwin a look that was half smile and half reproach. It was easy to guess what the females must have said to him. Darwin felt embarrassed, and he was relieved when the fiend went at once to Pole and felt his pulse. He looked pleased with himself at the result, and lifted Pole’s eyelid to look at the white. The empty bowl of stew sitting by Pole’s side also seemed to meet with his approval. He pointed at the pot that had contained the infusion of medicaments, and smiled triumphantly at Darwin.
“I know,” said Darwin. “And I’m mightily impressed, red-man. I want to know a lot more about that treatment, if we can manage to communicate with each other. I’ll be happy to trade my knowledge of medicinal botany for yours, lowland for highland. No,” he added, as he saw the other’s actions. “That isn’t necessary for me.”
The fiend had filled another pot with hot water while Darwin had been talking, and dropped into it a handful of dried fungus. He was holding it forward to Darwin. When the latter refused it, he became more insistent. He placed the bowl on the ground and tapped his chest. While Darwin watched closely, he drew back his lips from his teeth, shivered violently all over, and held cupped hands to groin and armpit to indicate swellings there.
Darwin rubbed his aching eyes, and frowned. The fiend’s mimicry was suggestive— but of something that seemed flatly impossible. Unless there was a danger, here on Cross Fell, of…
The insight was sudden, but clear. The legends, the King of Hate, the Treasure, the departure of the Romans from Cross Fell—at once all this made a coherent picture, and an alarming one. He blinked. The air around him suddenly seemed to swirl and teem with a hidden peril. He reached forward quickly and took the bowl.
“Perhaps I am wrong in my interpretation, red-man,” he said. “I hope so, for my own sake. But now I must take a chance on your good intentions.”
He lifted the bowl and drank, then puckered his lips with distaste. The contents were dark and bitter, strongly astringent and full of tannin. The red fiend smiled at him in satisfaction when he lowered the empty bowl.
“Now, red-man, to business,” said Darwin. He picked up the medicine chest and walked with it over to the fire. He hunkered down where the light was best and gestured to the red fiend to join him. The other seemed to understand exactly what was on Darwin’s mind. He opened the lid of the box, pulled out a packet wrapped in sheep-gut, and held it up for Darwin’s inspection.
How should one convey the use of a drug—assuming that a use were known— without words? Darwin prepared for a difficult problem in communication. Both the symptoms and the treatment for specific diseases would have to be shown using mimicry and primitive verbal exchange. He shook off his fatigue and leaned forward eagerly to meet the challenge.
Three hours later, he looked away from the red fiend and rubbed his eyes. Progress was excellent—but something was very wrong. His head was aching, the blood pounding in his temples. The buzzing and singing in his ears had worsened, and was accompanied by a blurring of vision and a feeling of nausea. The complex pattern of lines on the cave wall seemed to be moving, to have become a writhing tangle of shifting yellow tendrils.
He looked back at the fiend. The other was smiling—but what had previously seemed to be a look of friendship could equally well be read as a grin of savage triumph. Had he badly misunderstood the meaning of the infusion he had drunk earlier?
Darwin put his hands to the floor and attempted to steady himself. He struggled to rise to his feet, but it was too late. The cave was spiralling around him, the murals dipping and weaving. His chest was constricted, his stomach churning.
The last thing he saw before he lost consciousness was the red-streaked mask of the fiend, bending toward him as he slipped senseless to the floor of the cave.
Seen through the soft but relentless drizzle, Cross Fell was a dismal place. Silver was muted to dreary grey, and sable and copper gleams were washed out in the pale afternoon light. Anna Thaxton followed Jimmy up the steep slopes, already doubting her wisdom in setting out. The Helm stood steady and forbidding, three hundred feet above them, and although she had looked closely in all directions as they climbed, she had seen no sign of Pole and Darwin. She halted.
“Jimmy, how much farther? I’m tired, and we’ll soon be into the Helm.”
The boy turned and smiled. He pointed to a rock a couple of hundred yards away, then turned and pointed upwards. Anna frowned, then nodded.
“All right, Jimmy. I can walk that far. But are you sure you know where to find them?”
The lad nodded, then shrugged.
“Not sure, but you think so, eh? All right. Let’s keep going.”
Anna followed him upwards. Two minutes later, she stopped and peered at a scorched patch of heather.
“There’s been a lantern set down here, Jimmy—and recently. We must be on the right track.”
They were at the very brink of the Helm. Jimmy paused for a moment, as though taking accurate bearings, then moved up again into the heavy mist. Anna followed close behind him. Inside the Helm, visibility dropped to a few yards.
Jimmy stopped again and motioned Anna to his side. He pointed to a dark opening in the side of the hill.
“In here, Jimmy? You think they may have gone in, following the fiends?”
The boy nodded and led the way confidently forward into the tunnel. After a moment of hesitation, Anna followed him. The darkness inside quickly became impenetrable. She was forced to catch hold of the shawl that she had given Jimmy to wear, and dog his heels closely. He made his way steadily through the narrow tunnels, with no sign of uncertainty or confusion. At last he paused and drew Anna alongside him. They had reached a rough wooden bridge across a deep chasm, lit faintly from below by a ghostly gleaming on the walls. Far below, the light reflected from the surface of a dark and silent pool.
Jimmy pointed to a group of objects near the edge: a lantern, shoes and a greatcoat. Anna went to them and picked up the coat.
“Colonel Pole’s.” She looked down at the unruffled water below. “Jimmy, do you know what happened to them?”
The boy looked uncomfortable. He went to examine the frayed end of the trailing rope that hung from the bridge, then shook his head. He set out across the bridge, and Anna again took hold of the shawl. Soon they were again in total darkness. This time they seemed to grope their way along for an eternity. The path twisted and branched, moving upward and downward in the depths of the fell.
At last they made a final turn and emerged without warning into a broad clear area, full of people and lit by flickering firelight. Anna, dazzled after long minutes in total darkness, looked about her in confusion. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she realized with horror that the figures in front of her were not men and women—they were fiends, powerfully built and misshapen. She looked at the fires, and shivered at what she saw. Stretched out on piles of rough skins lay Erasmus Darwin and Jacob Pole, unconscious or dead. Two fiends, their faces red-daubed and hideous, crouched over Darwin’s body.