The knife drew nearer, with wilful, taunting slow-ness.
Marna began to struggle even more frantically than before. Then, as the knife was drawn back, she made a desperate final effort, and by blind chance did what any trained fighter would have told her to do. Her heel crashed down on to the foot of the man holding her, and her head jerked back viciously, hitting him full in the face. The grip on her slackened and with fear-bred strength, she twisted away from the lunging knife. Her arms came up wildly and she collided with the advanc-ing attacker as she found herself staggering forward, suddenly free. Stumbling to her knees, she landed on her pack. In the midst of the tumbling horror of what was happening, the familiar contact was incongruously reassuring.
There was a strangled cry behind her, and as she clambered to her feet she saw the two men bending low and staring at one another. The knife-wielder turned towards her. She could see his eyes, wide and savage. His mouth gaped to form a silent scream.
Without thinking, she swung her pack at him as he lurched towards her. It did not strike him particularly hard, but it unbalanced him and he fell to the ground with a cry of rage and pain as once again his knee collapsed. The knife bounced from his hand.
Unbalanced herself by her effort, Marna tumbled almost on top of him. Arms and legs flailing, she rolled away, intent now on seizing the fallen knife. As her hand closed about it, a great weight fell across her, forcing her face into the soft, damp forest litter. She gagged as she felt twigs and clinging soil being pushed into her mouth. Powerful hands twisted her over on to her back and she looked up to see her attacker sitting astride her, in a dreadful mockery of a childhood wrestling game. His weight crushed the breath out of her.
Then, those same powerful hands closed around her throat, thumbs hard, purposeful and practised, against her windpipe. All thoughts left her as a choking blackness instantly swept over her, but a screaming reflex thrust her hands upwards in an attempt to beat off this fearful assault. There was an interminable, timeless, moment, then the awful blackness was gone. Through her trembling, painful breathing, Marna saw light. As her vision cleared, she made out her attacker. He was still astride her. But he was motionless.
And there was something else…
On her hands. Warm. Unpleasant…
Slowly her eyes moved from the figure above her to her hands. Her face contorted in horror. One of the hands that had thrust up to beat off that final, murder-ous attack had held the knife. She felt it in her hand, but she could not see it. It had passed upwards, underneath the man’s ribcage, killing him almost immediately. Blood was running dark down her hands.
She could not release the knife.
As she watched, the now untenanted form above her toppled very slowly to one side. With her grip still reflex-tight around the handle of the knife, Marna was drawn upwards by it, until with a blood-spurting sigh it tore free from the body, and she dropped on to one elbow. The corpse rolled away from her and lay still like a spent lover.
Marna was shaking uncontrollably. Something in her mind was crying out to warn her that this was not yet finished. She struggled to listen to it, knowing that it was important.
The other man!
She jerked her head around in sudden fear of a re-newed attack. He was there! Only a few paces away. Leaning against a tree, and staring at her.
With a strange, animal whine, Marna scrambled desperately to her feet and, retreating, levelled the shaking knife at him. But he did not move. Then she saw that he was clutching his side, and a broad stain was colouring his loose, ragged tunic. Realization dawned. He must have received the knife blow intended for her when she fought free.
They stared at one another for a long moment, then the man, grimacing with pain, and his eyes fearful, turned and staggered off into the trees on a path that would carry him down the side of the valley and towards the road.
Marna stood staring after him for a long time after he had disappeared. She was motionless, except for the trembling that was still racking her. Then, with a cry of disgust, she spat the bitter twigs and leaves from her mouth and, dropping to her knees, vomited violently.
As the retching spasms faded, so others began, and she began to sob equally violently. At intervals she gasped, ‘I’m sorry,’ to the corpse of her would-be murderer. She crawled to his side and knelt by him, the knife still in her hand; for some reason she still could not let it go.
How long had it all taken? Perhaps only seconds, she thought.
And how was it possible that so much could change so quickly? For many things had changed. For one, her carefully planned journey to the capital was in ruins. She was a practical woman. She had allowed for fatigue and discomfort, for hunger and thirst, for weather, bad and good, but she had not allowed for events such as this; dangers from other people who were not Rannick’s people. Such people would have been friendly and helpful, because that’s the way people were. Now it came to her that Nilsson’s band might perhaps be no more than the vanguard of a great army of such people, scattered all over the land.
And too, was gone her confidence in her own ability to complete her journey. That was the truly appalling loss, and the one that most of her tears mourned. Part of her knew her for a foolish young girl, whose reckless actions would probably bring great harm to her father and perhaps many others in the valley when Rannick found out that she had fled. And too, they had led her to the killing of a man.
And in her folly she had told Rannick what she was going to do! She drew in a sour breath through clenched teeth and looked up at the brightening sky. Was there no foolishness of which she was not capable? She should run back to her father, ask his forgiveness. Ask – no, beg – Rannick’s forgiveness. Be strong by remaining in the valley and being close to him. Whatever he did to her could be no worse than her two assailants had intended. There was at least some affection in him, and who could say how he might change under her influence?
Yet still, another part of her told her that she was alive; that she had fought back against greater strength and prevailed. And that not only could she complete this journey, she must. How else could Rannick be stopped? For stopped he must be. Affection or no, he was a murderer, and he drew his own kind to him, like an open sore drew infection.
As the word murderer came to her however, she looked down at the bloodstained knife in her hands. Again, her response was disturbingly confused. She should throw the hideous, life-stopping thing away. Yet she knew that it was no more than an artefact. She was the life-stopping thing, not it. And she might well need a good knife again on this journey.
Her mind cleared quite suddenly, as if a cloud had moved from in front of the sun. And indeed, as her way ahead formed itself anew, long, bright shafts of sunlight began to cut through the wooded gloom, transforming it into a myriad greens and browns, shot through with the yellows and reds of countless woodland flowers. She began to hear the birds singing.
She looked down at the dead body. She could not leave it lying there; it was unthinkable. The forest creatures would…
She turned away from the thought.
Yet she could do no other than leave it.
Her resolution finally determined, she was about to stand up when a noise made her turn. She drew in a long, trembling breath, and the knife slipped from her hand.
Moving slowly towards her, ominous and long-shadowed in the dusty, leaf-dappled rays of the rising sun, were four riders.
Chapter 18
‘Of the true beginning, the beginning of the time that was before this time, nothing is truly known, though we sense that the world that was then is remembered, albeit dimly, at the heart of our knowledge. And too, by some others, though they are strange, and elsewhere.
‘But from the forming of this time, from the time of the fading of the Great Heat and the great remaking, we remember much.