The Quest - Smith Wilbur (читаем книги онлайн бесплатно TXT) 📗

bridge behind them. Blades clanged on blades. Men fell, then slithered off the sides of the bridge and dropped wailing into the void. All the time the axe strokes boomed against the timbers, and shouts started the echoes anew.

Suddenly the bridge shuddered, like a dog trying to shake off its fleas.

One side dropped and hung askew. Twenty Jarrians were hurled, screaming, into the gorge. Taita and Meren fell to their knees to keep their balance on the swaying deck. Only Nakonto stayed upright.

'Come back, Taita!' Fenn cried, and all those round her took up the cry. 'Come back! The bridge goes down! Come back!'

'Back!' Taita roared at Meren, who jumped up and ran, balancing like an acrobat. 'Go back!' he ordered Nakonto, but the Shilluk's eyes were glazed red with battle lust. They were fixed upon the enemy and he did not seem to hear Taita's voice. Taita hit him a resounding blow across the back with the flat of his sword. 'Get back! The fighting is over!' He seized his arm and thrust him towards the far end.

Nakonto shook his head as though waking from a trance and ran after Meren. Taita followed a few yards behind him. Meren reached the end of the bridge and sprang on to the rocky path, but at that moment there was a crack like a whiplash as one of the main guy ropes that held the bridge parted. The catwalk heaved and sagged at a sharper angle, before it caught again. Those Jarrians who still had a footing could no longer maintain it. One after another they slid towards the edge and dropped off. Nakonto reached solid ground a moment before the bridge sagged again.

Taita was still on it when it tilted violently. He slid towards the edge and, to save himself, flung aside his sword and threw himself flat. There were narrow gaps between the lashings of the planking. Clawing with hooked fingers, he found a handhold. The bridge shuddered again and fell until it hung vertically down the cliff face. Taita's feet dangled over the gorge as he hung on by his fingertips. He groped for a foothold, but the toes of his sandals were too bulky to squeeze into the narrow gaps in the planking. He drew himself up by the main strength of his arms.

An arrow thumped into the plank closest to his head. The Jarrians on the opposite side of the gorge were shooting at him, and he could not defend himself. He drew himself up hand over hand. Each time he changed his grip he hung on one hand and groped with the other for the planking above. The bridge was twisted so that each successive gap between the planks was narrower than the preceding one. At last he reached a point where he could not force his fingers into the next

opening and hung there helplessly. The next arrow struck so close that it pegged the skirt of his tunic to the wood.

'Taita!' It was Fenn's voice and he craned his neck to look up. Her face was ten feet above him. She was lying on her stomach peering over the edge. 'Oh, sweet Isis, I thought you had fallen.' Her voice trembled.

'Hold hard for just a little longer.' She was gone. Another arrow thumped into the timbers close to his left ear.

'Here, take hold of this.' The looped end of a halter rope dropped beside him. He reached for it with one hand and slipped it over his head, then worked the bight of the loop under his armpit.

'Are you ready?' Fenn's eyes were huge with fear. 'The other end is knotted to Whirlwind's saddle. We'll pull you up.' Her head disappeared again. With a jerk the rope came up tight. As he went up, he fended himself off the dangling bridge with his feet and hands. More arrows slammed into the timbers but although he could hear the Jarrians clamouring for his blood, like a pack of dogs beneath a treed leopard, not one of their arrows touched him.

As he came level with the path the strong hands of Meren and Nakonto reached out to haul him to safety. He regained his feet, and Fenn dropped Whirlwind's reins to run back to him. She embraced him silently with tears of relief streaming down her cheeks.

A that night they kept the column of refugees moving down the track, and in the early light of dawn they shepherded the last on to the bank of the Kitangule river. That was waiting for them at the gates of the boatyard stockade, and came quickly to meet Taita. 'I am glad to see you safe, Magus, but I am sorry to have missed the fighting. I have reports that it was hot and heavy. What news of the Jarrian pursuit?'

'The bridge over the gorge is down, but that will not hold them for long. Sidudu says there is an easier road down the escarpment forty leagues further to the south. We can be sure that Soklosh knows about it, and that he will take his men that way. He will be moving a great deal faster than we were able to. We can expect him to join us again soon.'

'The southern road is the main entry port into Jarri. Of course Soklosh must know of it.'

'I have left pickets upon the road to watch for him and to warn us of

his approach,' Taita told him. 'We must get these people on to the boats at once.' First they loaded the horses, then the remaining refugees.

Before the last were aboard the pickets galloped into the boatyards.

'The Jarrians' leading cohorts will be upon us within the hour.'

Meren and his men chivvied the last group of refugees down the jetty and into the boats. As soon as each vessel was filled the rowers pulled out into the mainstream of the river and turned the bows down the current. Fenn and Sidudu carried Hilto's litter on to the last boat in the flotilla. Twenty remained empty on the slipways so Taita remained ashore with a few men to see to their destruction. They threw lighted torches into them and when the timbers were blazing fiercely they pushed them into the river where they burned swiftly to the waterline. The lookouts on the walls of the stockade that surrounded the boatyard sounded the alarm on kudu-horn trumpets. 'The enemy is in sight!'

There was a final scramble for the boats. Taita and Meren jumped on to the deck where the two girls were waiting anxiously for them. Meren took the helm and the rowers pulled away from the dock. They were still within bowshot of the bank when the leading squadron of the Jarrian vanguard galloped into the boatyard. They dismounted and crowded the bank to loose volleys of arrows, some of which pegged into the deck but nobody was hit.

Meren swung the bows to catch the current of the wide Kitangule, which was in spate and bore them away, sweeping them round the first bend. He leant on the long steering oar as they gazed back at the high cliffs of the Jarrian massif. Perhaps they should have been ecstatic as they took their leave of the kingdom of Eos but, rather, they were silent and sober.

Taita and Fenn stood apart from the others. Fenn broke the silence at last. She spoke low, for Taita's ears alone: 'So we have failed in our quest. We have escaped, but the witch survives and the Nile flows no longer.'

'The game is not yet played out. The pieces are still on the board,'

Taita told her.

'I do not take your meaning, my lord. We are flying from Jarri, deserting the battlefield and leaving the witch alive. You have nothing to take back to Egypt and Pharaoh but these miserable fugitives and our own poor selves. Egypt is still doomed.'

'Nay, that is not all I take back with me. I have all the wisdom and astral power of Eos.'

'How will that profit you or Pharaoh if Egypt dies of drought?'

'Perhaps I will be able to use the witch's memories to unravel her mysteries and designs.'

'Do you already hold the key to her magic?' she asked hopefully, watching his face.

'This I do not know. I have taken from her a mountain and an ocean of knowledge and experience. My inner mind and consciousness are awash with it. There is so much that, like a dog with too many bones, I have had to bury most of it. Perhaps some is so deeply buried that I will never retrieve it. At best it will take time and effort to assimilate it all.