Read Online Otherwise by John Crowley - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Crowley
Tags: Fiction
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storm of mud, beat the Drum.
He is outpaced by Sennred, is cut off by a flanking movement of near-spent horse, the stone arm flails with a stone will of its own; he can hear nothing but a great roar and the screaming of his own breath. Then the Black horses part, shattered, and fall away. The tireless snowstorm parts also, and the field grows for a moment ghastly bright, and he sees, amid the broken, fleeing Black cavalry, the Queen, shuffling away on her big horse, slim sword in her great mailed hand.
He shouts forward whoever is around him; the sight of her lashes through him, an icy restorative. Horror and hate, he would smash her like a great bug if he could. He flings from his path with a kind of joy some household people of hers, sees her glance back at him and his men, sees her urge the horse into a massive trot: does not see, in his single purpose, her man Kyr and his Outland spear racing for him. Someone shouts behind him; he wheels, suddenly breathless with the shock of collision; his horse screams under him, for the stone arm with its own eye has seen and struck, throwing the spear’s point into his horse’s breast. She leaps, turns in air spurting blood, catapulting Kyr away by the spear driven in her, falls, is overrun by Kyr’s maddened horse, whose hooves trample her screaming head, trample her master, Redhand. He is kicked free, falls face down. His flung sword, plunged in mud, waves, trembles, is still. Redhand is still.
Blood frozen quickly stays as bright as when shed.
The Endwives, intent as carrion birds, move among the fallen, choosing work, turning over the dead to find the living caught beneath.
The Visitor’s manufacture keeps him from weariness, but not from horror. He hears its cries in his ears, he stumbles over it half buried in bloody snow. His eyes grow wide with it.
His difficulty is in telling the living from the dead. Some still moving he sees the sisters examine and leave; others who are unmoving they minister to. This one: face down, arm twisted grotesquely… the Visitor turns him gently with more than man’s strength, holds his torch near to see. “You’re dead.” A guess. The eyes look up at him unseeing. “Are you dead?” He wipes pink snow from the face: it is the man Redhand, who begins to breathe stertorously, and blows a blood-bubble from his gray lips. The Visitor considers this sufficient and lifts him easily in his arms, turning this way and that to decide what next. Redhand’s breath grows less labored; he clings to the Visitor almost like a child in nurse’s arms, his numb fingers clutching, the brown cloak. Fauconred’s tent: he sees its Cup banner far off as someone passes it with a torch. Even when it disappears into darkness again, he moves unerringly toward it, through that trampled, screaming field: and each separate cry is separately engraved on a deathless, forgetless memory.
Fauconred starts to see him. His day has been full of terrible things, but somehow, now, the Visitor’s face seems most terrible: what had seemed changeless and blank has altered, the eyes are wide and deep-shadowed, the mouth thin and down-drawn.
“It’s he, Redhand.” The smooth, cool voice has not changed. “Help me. Tell me if he’s dead. Tell me… He mustn’t be dead. He mustn’t be. He must live.”
TWO
SECRETARY
1
A n image of Caermon: a man, crowned with leaves, holding in one hand a bunch of twigs, and seated on a stone.
He found that though he came no closer to any Reason or Direction in his being, his understanding of his faculties grew, chiefly through the amazement of others. Fauconred had first noticed his hearing, in the Throat; his strength in lifting and carrying wounded Redhand had amazed the Endwives. Now Learned Redhand had observed him learn to read the modern and ancient languages in mere weeks—and remember everything he learned in them.
An image of Shen: a woman, weeping, seated in a cart drawn by dogs, wearing a crown.
The Visitor
He is outpaced by Sennred, is cut off by a flanking movement of near-spent horse, the stone arm flails with a stone will of its own; he can hear nothing but a great roar and the screaming of his own breath. Then the Black horses part, shattered, and fall away. The tireless snowstorm parts also, and the field grows for a moment ghastly bright, and he sees, amid the broken, fleeing Black cavalry, the Queen, shuffling away on her big horse, slim sword in her great mailed hand.
He shouts forward whoever is around him; the sight of her lashes through him, an icy restorative. Horror and hate, he would smash her like a great bug if he could. He flings from his path with a kind of joy some household people of hers, sees her glance back at him and his men, sees her urge the horse into a massive trot: does not see, in his single purpose, her man Kyr and his Outland spear racing for him. Someone shouts behind him; he wheels, suddenly breathless with the shock of collision; his horse screams under him, for the stone arm with its own eye has seen and struck, throwing the spear’s point into his horse’s breast. She leaps, turns in air spurting blood, catapulting Kyr away by the spear driven in her, falls, is overrun by Kyr’s maddened horse, whose hooves trample her screaming head, trample her master, Redhand. He is kicked free, falls face down. His flung sword, plunged in mud, waves, trembles, is still. Redhand is still.
Blood frozen quickly stays as bright as when shed.
The Endwives, intent as carrion birds, move among the fallen, choosing work, turning over the dead to find the living caught beneath.
The Visitor’s manufacture keeps him from weariness, but not from horror. He hears its cries in his ears, he stumbles over it half buried in bloody snow. His eyes grow wide with it.
His difficulty is in telling the living from the dead. Some still moving he sees the sisters examine and leave; others who are unmoving they minister to. This one: face down, arm twisted grotesquely… the Visitor turns him gently with more than man’s strength, holds his torch near to see. “You’re dead.” A guess. The eyes look up at him unseeing. “Are you dead?” He wipes pink snow from the face: it is the man Redhand, who begins to breathe stertorously, and blows a blood-bubble from his gray lips. The Visitor considers this sufficient and lifts him easily in his arms, turning this way and that to decide what next. Redhand’s breath grows less labored; he clings to the Visitor almost like a child in nurse’s arms, his numb fingers clutching, the brown cloak. Fauconred’s tent: he sees its Cup banner far off as someone passes it with a torch. Even when it disappears into darkness again, he moves unerringly toward it, through that trampled, screaming field: and each separate cry is separately engraved on a deathless, forgetless memory.
Fauconred starts to see him. His day has been full of terrible things, but somehow, now, the Visitor’s face seems most terrible: what had seemed changeless and blank has altered, the eyes are wide and deep-shadowed, the mouth thin and down-drawn.
“It’s he, Redhand.” The smooth, cool voice has not changed. “Help me. Tell me if he’s dead. Tell me… He mustn’t be dead. He mustn’t be. He must live.”
TWO
SECRETARY
1
A n image of Caermon: a man, crowned with leaves, holding in one hand a bunch of twigs, and seated on a stone.
He found that though he came no closer to any Reason or Direction in his being, his understanding of his faculties grew, chiefly through the amazement of others. Fauconred had first noticed his hearing, in the Throat; his strength in lifting and carrying wounded Redhand had amazed the Endwives. Now Learned Redhand had observed him learn to read the modern and ancient languages in mere weeks—and remember everything he learned in them.
An image of Shen: a woman, weeping, seated in a cart drawn by dogs, wearing a crown.
The Visitor
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