He did not think that he had slept at all although the sudden presence of the bruised-blue dawn told him that sleep must have stolen an hour or two from his waiting. At once he was on his feet, looking for the horses.
Parthenal stirred and sat up. “I’ll come with you.”
Rothir nodded. It seemed all too clear to him now, in the cold dim light, that he was going only to find a corpse at best. At worst, nothing. And then he would never know where she was. Last night he had held on doggedly to hope. This morning, even as he pulled himself up onto Narba, he knew that hope was pointless.
All the same he would try to find her. He motioned with his hand to Tiburé, as she woke and blinked and scratched her head, and then he rode away before she could start to dissuade him.
He was thankful that Parthenal did not try to either comfort or to disillusion him. His friend accompanied him in silence as Narba picked a way along the narrow trail beside the busy, hurrying Thore. He wished that he could hurry likewise. He had five miles to go; at least an hour at this rate. Too long. But it could not make a difference now.
The thundering of the Thore was too tremendous to permit much speech. In any case what was there to say? His mind kept turning to the same images: a crumpled, broken body lying by the river, or disappearing downstream, vanishing as he tried to reach it. Carried far beyond his grasp.
Accept it, he thought, there will be nothing to find. But something rebelled inside him. He would not accept it. He had to accept it. No. Sickness welled up within him.
So he forced himself away from those thoughts to guess at distances while the horses walked on carefully. Sometimes they were in the water, sometimes out of it, as the path dipped in and out of the shallow margin of the river. Gradually the slopes above him grew and steepened and the echoes of the hoof-steps lengthened.
“It can’t be far now,” said Parthenal eventually. “There’s the split crag we saw from the other side. So that must be the stone platform jutting out up there.”
Rothir nodded. It was an appallingly long fall. All this way he thought he had been slowly hardening his heart and will in readiness. Now his efforts seemed to have had no effect. He felt sick again as he began to scan the opposite bank of the river.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. The water rushed and roared beside him. It did not care. He checked the landmarks above his head; moved a little further on, and checked again, Parthenal always following.
Nothing. He walked Narba on, and scanned the far shore again.
Nothing. He had known this from the start. It was hopeless. Yet he had to keep on looking.
Nothing. And again here.
Nothing. Furter down. Keep going. Even if there’s no point.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
And then a…
On the far side, a bundle. A huddle of clothes and limbs and straggled hair. It wasn’t a stoneman.
“That’s her,” he said, in utter disbelief, and flinging himself off the horse he thrust his sword and cloak at Parthenal to hold before immediately beginning to wade into the river.
Despite his haste he knew he had to test its depth. Here it had widened into one of its smoothly swirling pools, but was not too deep: so he went back for Narba.
“I’ll wait here,” said Parthenal. “Wave if you need help.” Rothir nodded and led his horse into the water. At its deepest it was barely chest-high. He did not need to swim, although he could only make his way slowly to avoid being pushed over by the icy current. Narba moved strongly and confidently by his side. He had to concentrate on the tumultuous river and watch where he was wading. When he emerged on the gravelly rocks of the other shore he was shocked all over again by the sight of the body.
She was lying on her side with her back to him. When he rolled her gently over she was cold and still and wet. He drew away the clinging strands of hair. Her face was bloody and bruised and seemed to be sticky with something; but it dawned on him that she was breathing.
His heart seemed to give a great leap in his chest. He felt her throat for a pulse and after a moment found it: fast but weak. Now for the first time he noticed the bundle of cloth that was wrapped around her right leg, untidily but firmly tied. It had a thin green check running through it where it was not soaked red with blood. Her pack was lying open next to her, its contents spilled. Cloth and empty jars. He could not imagine how she had survived the fall well enough to do so much.
But he did not know what other injuries she might have suffered in that fall. Under the ripped clothing her arms and legs seemed scraped and battered but not broken, as far as he could tell from running his hands swiftly down them. He could afford to spend no more time checking. Picking her up carefully in both arms he deposited her face down across the saddle, hanging over Narba’s back. It was the safest way to carry her across the river.
Then he held her on as he led the horse back, through the rushing, whirling, grasping Thore. Her hands trailed in the water. Still he did not dare to hope. She could die at any moment. Not yet, please, not yet. Narba snorted and stepped purposefully out onto the other side.
“She’s alive,” he said to Parthenal as soon as he was across.
Parthenal stared, incredulous. “How can she be?”
“I don’t know. She is.” He checked that she was in fact still breathing, and then left her in the same position dangling over Narba’s back. Undignified, but it worked. He took his dry cloak from Parthenal and threw it over her to try and warm her up.
Narba walked sedately along the path as if totally unbothered by his freezing dip. Ignoring his own chilled and sodden limbs, Rothir held Yaret’s bandaged leg away from the horse’s jolting body. It was dripping blood but not too much. Keep her alive, he thought, keep her alive, without knowing whether it was himself he thus implored or someone else.
They were half way back along the shore path when the cloak began to flap and flounder. Rothir swiftly removed it, and lifted the struggling Yaret down. With Parthenal’s help he laid her on the path. Her eyes were closed and she was shivering convulsively.
“Yaret?”
No answer.
“She’s cold,” said Parthenal, “and you’re too wet to help.” He lay down alongside Yaret on the stony ground and put his arms around her, pulling his cloak round them both. Rothir draped his own cloak on top. Then he knelt and dripped on her other side and willed her not to die.
After five minutes the shaking lessened. Her eyes half-opened although her mind did not appear to be there. She gazed up at Rothir for a long moment, yet she seemed aware of neither him nor Parthenal, who now stood up.
“You’re safe,” said Rothir to her none the less. “You’re safe, Yaret. We found you.”
The saying of it seemed finally to make it true, and he was astounded that it had been possible. That they had done it. That she had survived. He did not want to allow himself to believe it yet.
“Ah.” Yaret let out a long breath and closed her eyes. “Stone,” she whispered.
“The stonemen are all gone. You’re safe now. We’re taking you back to the others.”
“Safe?”
“Everyone is safe,” said Rothir.
While she was still conscious he propped up her head and held a waterskin to her mouth, although not much went in. Then after a brief discussion with Parthenal, he said,
“We’re going to sit you on the horse. I’ll go up behind you.”
They lifted her back onto Narba, this time semi-upright in the saddle. Parthenal suggested binding his rolled-up cloak underneath the truncated leg to stop it bumping into Narba’s flank; so this they did. Then Rothir carefully swung himself up behind her, praying that she would be easier to keep in place than Eled had been.
She was. Her head soon dropped down on her chest as she lost consciousness again, but she was lighter than Eled, and with one arm firmly round her Rothir was able to hold her on the saddle as he rode.
He felt as if he had been given a reprieve from a death sentence. Yet he dared not place too much trust in this sudden hope. She could still die at any time. Take her last breath in this saddle, on this path.
He tried to will life into her through his own body. Lungs, keep breathing. Heart, keep beating. Narba walked on steadily; he was well used to this exercise by now.
She was unconscious but still alive when they arrived back at the ford. They lifted her carefully down and deposited her at Tiburé’s feet, like a defiant offering.
Tiburé looked up at him, startled. “She can’t be!”
“She is,” said Rothir. He felt exhausted but he could not rest just yet. “I don’t think she’s broken anything obvious, but you need to check her over. She may have internal injuries, in which case I’ve just made everything much worse. And we need to look at her foot.”
“Who put that bandage on?”
“She did.”
“What? How?”
He shrugged.
“I never heard her,” said Maeneb, sounding shattered. “I never heard her.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Rothir said. “It made no difference. I had to look for her in any case.”
Tiburé undid Yaret’s damp clothing and felt gently down her trunk and along her limbs.
“Gashes and bruises,” she said. “She’s going to be black and blue in a few days.” Rothir’s heart turned over at her assumption that Yaret would still be alive by then.
“I can’t be sure about internal damage,” Tiburé went on, “but her limbs seem to be intact. The left knee’s swollen. As for her foot…” She looked carefully at it but did no more than gently touch the bloodied woollen wrappings. Her finger came away sticky. Putting it experimentally to her nose and then her mouth, she smiled and shook her head in disbelief.
“Honey!” she said. “And salt, I think. Well, better than nothing. I wouldn’t want to attempt to take that bandage off. Removing it will do more harm than good. It’ll just start the leg bleeding again; at the moment it’s almost stopped. There’s some oozing there, around the edge, but that’s all. We’re better leaving the whole thing in place until we reach Farwithiel.”
Rothir nodded.
“I’ll give her ethlon,” said Tiburé. “It ought to wake her up.” She took out the vial and dribbled a few drops into Yaret’s mouth. Although Yaret did not visibly swallow, after a couple of minutes she stirred and tried to turn over.
“Open your eyes,” commanded Tiburé. “Look at me. At me. You need to drink.”
“Let me do it,” said Rothir, faintly disgusted with her peremptory demands. He lifted Yaret with one arm under her shoulders and again offered her water. She drank this time, but messily, water spilling down her shirt.
“Ah,” she said, looking up at him. Then she craned her head to peer at her foot. After a moment she murmured “Ah well,” and her head fell back on to his arm.
“We’re going to take you to Farwithiel,” he promised. “They have healers there. They’ll look after you.”
“Ah.” A faint smile twitched across her pale lips. Healers would not be able to replace her foot, he thought.
And it would be at least a two days’ journey. It would have taken only one more day to reach Farwithiel without the invalids. But they had two invalids now: this expedition had turned into a disaster. He glanced across at Eled, who was sitting up and staring, with a question in his wide dark eyes.
“We’ll tell you later,” said Parthenal to him quietly. “Tiburé? How soon can we move on?”
“The sooner the better,” answered Tiburé. “Assuming that the Farwth will allow us in. What do you think, Maeneb?”
“I don’t know,” said Maeneb, her voice desolate. “I think that I know nothing any more.”
“Well, you will have to persuade the Farwth to let us in,” Rothir told her. He heard the roughness in his own voice and did not care. “Or I will.”
“Persuade the Farwth?” queried Parthenal, his eyebrows raised.
Rothir nodded grimly. He knew the Farwth was not persuadable. But if he had to, he would force it to admit them. He had no idea how – for the Farwth was greater than any earthbound power that he had ever met – but right now he felt as ruthless as a whirlwind, full of a turmoil of fear and impatience and some other, indefinable, emotion. He was not to be denied. Somehow he would get the Farwth to agree.