Quest Beyond Time by Tony Morphett Read Free Book Online

combined with a round shield they called a ‘target’. Another claimed that Mike had the build of a bowman, and yet another favoured a curious weapon which had a handle ending in a short length of chain to which was attached a spiked ball. A ‘morningstar’ he had called it.
    Mike had refused them all, and only at the last moment had been persuaded to wear a sheathed knife on his belt. Katrin had explained to him that under the Covenant (whatever that was) only the slaves of the Hanged God went unarmed, and the penalty for impersonating such a one was death.
    ‘Seems as if you’ve only got one penalty up here in the future,’ Mike had said.
    ‘No,’ she had replied seriously, ‘there is selling in slavery, lopping of limbs and blood price in cattle.’
    ‘Why do I always end up sorry that I ask these things?’ Mike had said.
    ‘How do you punish lawbreaking in Before?’ Katrin had then asked.
    ‘Gaol, mostly.’
    ‘What is gaol?’
    ‘You get locked up. In a building with other lawbreakers. For one year, two years . . . ten . . . twenty.’
    She had looked at him solemnly for a moment, then, ‘Are the Dark Ones worshipped in Before?’ she had asked.
    He had not understood what she meant.
    ‘To lock a kinsman up . . . until old . . . such a thought might come from the Father of the Dark Ones himself. Better to lop limbs or kill, I think.’
    He had seen, from the set of her face, that the idea of prison was an obscenity to her. ‘We think killing’s wrong,’ he had tried to explain.
    ‘To kill one person was wrong but to kill cities was right?’
    He had paused for a long moment. Then, ‘I don’t think I can quite explain it in a few words,’ he had said.
    She had smiled. Her smiles were so rare that they seemed to light her face from within. ‘Or in many words either, I think. Perhaps the gods sent The War to clean such ideas from the earth.’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ he had answered. ‘I don’t think so.’
    But he had lain on his hard shelf for a long time that night thinking about it, until sleep had come to close his circular conversation with himself.
    Now the three of them and their packhorse were moving into the same open parklike forest he had run through as a fugitive two nights before.
    As the travellers disappeared into the trees, one of the Elders turned to Simon. ‘So we have a chance.’
    ‘One in ten,’ said another of the Elders. ‘The Old Woman at our homestead cast the bones on them. On nine casts, she saw them dead.’
    ‘The gods sent him,’ Simon said. ‘The gods will bring them safe home.’
    ‘The gods cast us like bones, Simon.’
    Simon looked at the Elder, and had no answer.
    About mid-morning, the travellers paused to rest. Mike was grateful for the halt, though they had earlier rested five minutes in every hour. He had timed the rest periods on his watch. Fergus and Katrin had known by instinct.
    Mike was seated on a low outcrop of pale stone. He was enjoying the walk. The air smelt crisp with approaching autumn, and the going was fairly easy.
    ‘Do you bum off,’ he asked Fergus, ‘to keep the forest free for hunting?’
    Fergus seemed surprised at the question. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘do you do so in Before?’
    ‘No. I was just wondering.’
    Fergus’s eyes roved over the terrain. Mike had noticed that both Fergus and Katrin were always watching, always looking in every direction as they moved along. They seemed to coordinate their watching. While one looked one way, the other would be scanning the opposite direction. It had taken him some time to realize what the movements reminded him of. Then it came to him. He had seen infantrymen do it in war movies. These people were instinctively on a war footing at all times. When they stepped outside their house they were on patrol.
    As he sat, resting in the warm morning, the sunlight filtering through the tall gum trees onto him, Mike became aware of the cold seeping into him from the stone on which he sat.