So as Santos Hall pushed ahead through the Yat and up into the steeper Lydon Gorge half of his men were slowly moving over Mount Simon towards the Klepht train making its slow progress out of the mountains altogether and onto the plains that led to the border five days away. Hall was now taking fewer risks as they fought up the Lydon Gorge and he allowed progress to slow both to protect his men and to give the impression that the Klepht tactics were working. Santos Hall now knew about Kleist from Selo and though he did not know the name or the connection to Thomas Cale – Santos Hall was now a devoted follower – it did explain the terrible accuracy of some of the sharps coming from the Klephts. If this Kleist was once a Redeemer acolyte he would be in no doubt what was coming to him if they caught him, something Santos Hall was confident they would. Once the other half of his cohort was over the mountain they’d be with the train and then turn back to take the Klephts fighting them in the mountains from the rear.
With the Redeemers so cautious the Klephts were elated; with every hour that passed the train, however slowly, moved an hour further from disaster. They had, they thought, inflicted so many casualties on the supermen of the Redeemers that this was what had slowed them to a crawl. It was not, perhaps, entirely unforgivable that some began to question whether Kleist was right in his estimation of their abilities and if so in his assessment of the dangers that had cost them so grievously. Others wanted to hang on to the idea that the Redeemers were monsters of military excellence – it made them, and who can’t understand such an impulse, all the more impressed with their own bravery. And it was considerable. Klephts died in what was for them great numbers. They were few after all, and no one shirked. But now, even as they inflicted fewer deaths themselves, they also suffered fewer losses.
Given that Kleist had feared the worst you may perhaps blame him for not questioning the lack of aggression of his old masters. He did. But hope is a great obstacle to clear judgement. He knew nothing about Burgrave Selo and had barely even talked to him. No one had brought the path over Mount Simon to his attention -there being no shortage of them and their being so treacherous to the unguided. In addition he excelled himself in murderous accuracy – there were no inhibitions about killing when it came to the priests. Any movement and he would let loose and, to his own grim delight and the noisy joy of the Klephts, he would find his target far more often than not. Redeemer Santos Hall was forced to sit behind various rocks devising ever more hideous punishments for the little shit causing him and his men so much grief. And, besides, Kleist had never fought in any battle other than at Silbury Hill and that was of no useful comparison here. So he puzzled over the comparative ease of his success but lacking anything solid to challenge it had little choice but to accept it as it stood. So as the Klephts and Redeemers fought in the gorges and died in small numbers, two hundred and fifty men crawled over the freezing top of Mount Simon making their way after the nine hundred women and children now easing their way onto the Mulberry Downs and making better progress than anyone had a right to expect.
It was late on the second day of the slow Klepht withdrawal up the gorges that Kleist realized it was profoundly wrong to kill the Redeemers. It made much more sense to wound them instead. Whatever their belief in the value of suffering for others they took their own pain less patiently and this applied at every leveclass="underline" they were insanely touchy about criticism of any kind and regarded the slightest resistance to their freedom of action, no matter how brutal, as evidence of outrageous persecution. In the white heat of battle they would sacrifice themselves and their fellows in great numbers without a second thought, but subsequently treated their wounded in a manner that would have been touching if it were not for their brutality towards those of their enemies. The Redeemers were the superior of all in their treatment of wounds and had a great willingness, one extended to no other field of learning, to try any new method of healing. From that time on, where it was possible, Kleist shot to the arm or the leg or the stomach knowing that in slow ambush warfare of this kind they would be hard pressed not to stop to treat the injured. The result was a satisfying increase in weeping and gnashing of teeth from his old tormentors and an even greater slowing of their progress.
But now the other Redeemers were off Mount Simon and moving down quickly to the Mulberry Downs. When they caught up with the train they were still more than two days from safety.
What is to be said about what happened next? The great Neechy held it to be true that even the most courageous must reserve the right to look away.
By sunset, some five hours after they caught the train, the Redeemers were riding away back to the mountains to attack the Klephts who were now utterly bereft of wives, children and parents. They left behind them ten hangmen’s scaffolds and piled around each a heap of ashes.
24
For two days Vague Henri had been searching up and down the Swiss border to find the crossing where IdrisPukke had promised, if he survived, to try and arrange safe passage. But he had warned Vague Henri to be careful and his plan had not included bringing with him slightly more than a hundred and sixty Purgators, whose presence would be likely to put off even the most heavily bribed guard. As it happened, when he recognized the Rudlow crossing IdrisPukke had described and shouted out the password ‘IdrisPukke’ all he got in reply some twenty seconds later was a volley of arrows and crossbow bolts.
Returning, Vague Henri brought the bad news to Cale. He was sitting by a small fire on his own, as he always did when Vague Henri was away. His loathing for the Purgators and refusal to have anything to do with them unless he was obliged to was interpreted by them as a sign of his splendid isolation – a mark of holiness not hostility. He was reading the letter Bosco had given him before the second battle of the Golan and which he’d put in one of his many pockets then forgotten about in the face of more pressing business.
‘What’s that?’ asked Vague Henri as Cale looked up from his reading and quickly put the letter away.
‘Nothing.’
‘Why so anxious to hide nothing?’
‘What I meant when I said it was nothing is that it’s none of your bloody business.’
The conversation that followed about what Vague Henri had found on his expedition was predictably bad-tempered. When they had finished Vague Henri went off and built his own bonfire.
They left at dawn and probed further up the border for nearly two days looking for a likely weak spot where a silent entry might be made. But it was clear from the ditches, fences and other obstructions being built that the Swiss were becoming nervous and preparing for something unpleasant.
In the end they decided to find the nearest and least guarded crossing close to Spanish Leeds and make a dash for it. Insomniac, twitchy Switzers might have been expecting something but they were not expecting it now, tonight. In any case, the guards on the Wanderley crossing were inexperienced and the sudden emergence of a hundred and sixty soldiers out of the dark at three in the morning took them completely by surprise. They surrendered immediately and were tied up in their guard block. All except one, who hid in the nearby forest and as the Purgators left let loose a defiant arrow which took Vague Henri full in the face as he looked back to check everyone had passed through safely.