Quest Beyond Time by Tony Morphett Read Free Book Online Page B

It showed signs of having been covered with earth but now the action of wind and rain were uncovering it again. It reminded him of the
Coke
sign. He stood looking at it, at the familiar service station emblem.
    ‘There are many such things along the Giants’ Road.’
    He turned and saw Katrin just behind him. Fergus was moving on with the packhorse. He saw the warrior stumble and was surprised for the giant usually moved with an uncanny grace.
    ‘Are they signs of your clans? Or your gods?’ she asked.
    Mike was saved from tears by the question. He managed a dry smile. ‘Our gods? Yes. They marked service stations. Shrines of the things we worshipped.’
    It was towards evening when they came to the Field Of Bones. Several more times during the afternoon, Fergus had swayed or stumbled and each time Mike could read the concern on Katrin’s face.
    They were moving down the slope of a hill into a basin ringed on three sides by hills and open on the fourth side. As they came down the hillside, Mike saw a human skull on the ground. Its empty eye sockets were turned toward the sky and by it lay a rusted helmet, dented and cloven.
    He stopped and looked around. The skull lay among other bones and broken and discarded arms and armour.
    He stood, staring.
    Fergus saw him like that and he too paused and leant his elbows on the packhorse’s back. He looked at Mike keenly from under his shaggy eyebrows. ‘Never seen this battlefield before, boy?’
    ‘Of course not.’
    ‘You look surprised.’
    ‘It’s the bones,’ Mike replied. ‘We bury our dead.’
    ‘And so do we. But not these.’
    Katrin was looking at the grim relics with pride. ‘My father and uncle fought here twenty years ago. Did you not, Fergus?’
    The grim warrior nodded with a quiet satisfaction, as of a tradesman looking at work done years before, and finding its quality still good. ‘They came down that slope,’ he said, pointing to one of the further hills, ‘out of the morning mist. The men of the clan-we-do-not-name. They came and we fought them. And we slew them here and left them to the hawks.’
    Mike looked at the place, and tried to see it as it must have looked on that twenty-year-gone morning. The armoured men filing down the slope out of the mist, met by other armoured men, with the younger Simon and Fergus among them. And then the shouting, and the clash of metal, and the screams . . .
    He broke out of his daydream. ‘Who were they?’ Mike asked.
    ‘They were the Clan who enslaved the Little People. They tried to make their chieftain tyrant over us. To give us a king.’ He spat the word. ‘And here we wrote the Covenant in their blood . . . and left them to the birds’ beaks!’ As he shouted the last words, Fergus swayed on his feet.
    He turned, grasped the leading-halter of the packhorse and strode on. Mike watched him walk. He meandered, like a man who was drunk.
    They were just beyond the bones and scattered armour, when Fergus fell. He had been walking past his strength for miles, and now he fell like a great tree. He lay face-down for a moment, then thrust with one arm, and forced himself onto his back. He looked up at Katrin. ‘Slay him! Slay the witchboy! Now!’
    Katrin looked from Fergus to Mike and back again. Mike took a step back but knew the futility of running. She could take him with an arrow long before he reached cover.
    ‘He might be from the Dark Ones! Slay him!’
    ‘No gain without risk!’ Katrin said. The way she said it, it sounded like a proverb. ‘He’s our one chance to get to the Island.’
    ‘Slay him!’
    It seemed to Mike that Fergus had an unhealthily one-track mind. It was like a movie. He felt he was outside it all, watching it happen. He stood, frozen to the spot.
    But Katrin was defying her uncle. ‘No!’
    In an act of will conquering weakness, Fergus surged from the ground, drawing his sword. The effort was too great, and he fell again, as if struck down.
    ‘What’s wrong with him?’