To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [217]
Kathi said, ‘Whatever happened to you, you deserved it.’
‘It was worth trying,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t persuade him to put the old man in here, and take me?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘But you won’t forget to send someone back?’
‘If there is anyone left to send,’ Kathi said.
She said it jokingly. Furious though she was, she left without destroying his hopes with the truth. They had no guide from now on, only a senseless man strapped to her saddle. Now they had to rely on themselves to follow that primitive scratched map on the jacket; to distinguish the mountains of Thríhyrningur and Thórólfsfell and look out for the canyon of Bleiksárgljúfur; to make the appalling journey alone in failing light that would take them at least to Hlídarendi. Nor did she tell him the worst news of all. Robin of Berecrofts, said the pendulum, was no longer at the mouth of the delta.
It meant, at best, that the ships were standing off out of danger, and had taken him with them. It meant, at worst, that when they reached the coast, there would be nothing there.
They crossed the river lower down where, her companion said, the water promised to be pleasantly warm without skinning them. He guided the pony while she walked with the Icelander’s stave; and she helped haul the beast up the opposite bank. She was not sure when she had ever been so tired in her life, but there was no point in saying so.
There was no sign of the ponies. Steam drifted down from the spout, and the gulley carried its roar: they still had to speak with raised voices. Apart from one joke, neither mentioned the cascade again. If it could happen once, it could happen again under their feet. When they had at length reached the height of the bank, she did look across to the three peaks of Hekla. The smoke was still brown. It seemed to her that there was a glow at the base, but she might have been mistaken. Then they had to climb.
She knew then how tired he was, too. Glímu-Sveinn had brought them over the terrain, but it was the remorseless concentration of the diviner which had guided them through the fogs of blown snow, and kept them moving always surely south. She had already realised that, without Robin to act as his magnet, M. de Fleury would in future be powerless. But meantime the landmarks were there to be read, and they must do what they could.
She had never before embarked upon a sustained and dangerous trial in partnership with one person. Illness had taught her endurance, and her travels in Sinai had tested that same endurance in different ways. In the four years of her intermittent acquaintance with Nicholas de Fleury, she had observed and enjoyed his preferred methods of relieving boredom, or reassuring the insecure, or exposing to ridicule any obstacle unfortunate enough to stand in his way. It had not occurred to her that he would not work with a partner as he worked with a group, some of whom he wished to keep at a distance. She had competed with him in sport several times, and at games and in song. She had touched, mostly by accident, upon moments of both violence and tragedy in his life, including the death and presumed death of two women, and the recovery of his son. As a result (she had been told), he thought of her as a young brother.
In fact, he did not treat her as either young, or a brother. He talked as to a partner, and entirely about what they were doing. She saw that he had made a practical compound of their assets: her lightness and speed; his strength, so long as it lasted, and his experience from his months in the Tyrol and from the mountains of Asia and Italy. She let herself fall into his way of discussion, light, economical, and to the point, which provided its own stimulation without any painstaking banter. Problems arose, and were solved.
She was able to ride very little. Burdened with the unconscious man, the pony had to be coaxed down the icy sides of a gorge, and up through the opposite ledges. It could step from rock to rock with precision, but would not jump over a chasm. At times,