The Power That Preserves

Three: The Rescue

A cold wind blew through Covenant’s soul as he struggled up out of the rock. It chilled him as if the marrow of his bones had been laid bare to an exhalation of cruel ice-cruel and sardonic, tinged with that faint yet bottomless green travail which was the antithesis of green things growing. But slowly it left him, slid away into another dimension. He became more conscious of the stone. Its granite impenetrability thickened around him; he began to feel that he was suffocating.

He flailed his arms and legs, tried to reach toward the surface. But for a time he could not even be sure that his limbs were moving. Then a series of jolts began to hurt his joints. He sensed through his elbows and knees that he was thrashing against something hard.

He was pounding his arms and legs at the hillside. Behind the muffled thuds and slaps he made, he could hear running water. The sun shone objectively somewhere beyond him. He jerked up his head.

At first, he could not orient himself. A stream splashed vividly across his sight; he felt that he was peering at it from above, that the slope down which it ran was canted impossibly under him. But at last he realized that he was not looking downward. He lay horizontally across the slope. The hill rose above him on the right, dropped away on the left.

He turned his head to search for the girl and the snake.

His eyes refused to focus. Something pale gleamed in front of his face, prevented him from seeing down the hill.

A thin, childish voice near him said, “Mister? Are you okay, mister? You fell down,”

He was trying to see too far away. With an effort, he screwed his gaze closer, and at last found himself staring from a distance of a few inches at a bare shin. In the sunlight, it gleamed as pure and pale as if it had been anointed with chrism. But already it showed a slight swelling. And in the centre of the swelling were two small red marks like paired pinpricks.

“Mister?” the child said again. “Are you okay? The snake bit me. My leg hurts.”

The frigid winter he had left behind seemed to leap at him from the depths of his mind. He began to shiver. But he forced himself to disregard the cold, bent all his attention toward those two red fang marks. Without taking his eyes off them, he climbed into a sitting position. His bruises groaned at him, and his forehead throbbed sickly, but he ignored all the pain, discounted it as if it had nothing to do with him. His trembling hands drew the little girl toward him.

Snakebite, he thought numbly. How do you treat snakebite?

“All right,” he said, then stopped. His voice shook unreassuringly, and his throat felt too dry to be controlled. He did not seem to know any comforting words. He swallowed hoarsely and hugged the child’s thin bones to his chest. “All right. You’re going to be all right. I’m here. I’ll help you.”

He sounded grotesque to himself-ghoulish and useless. The cut in his lip and gum interfered with his articulation. But he ignored that, too. He could not afford the energy to worry about such things. A haze of fever parched his thoughts, and he needed all his strength to fight it, recollect the treatment for snakebite.

He stared at the fang marks until he remembered. Stop the circulation, he said to himself as if he were stupid. Cut. Get out the poison.

Jerking himself into movement, he fumbled for his penknife.

When he got it out, he dropped it on the ground beside him, and hunted through the debris which littered his brain for something which he could use as a tourniquet. His belt would not do, he had no way to fasten it tightly enough. The child’s dress had no belt. Her shoelaces did not look long enough.

“My leg hurts,” she said plaintively. “I want my mommy.”

“Where is she?” muttered Covenant.

“That way.” She pointed vaguely downstream. “A long way. Daddy spanked me and I snuck away.”

Covenant clutched the girl with one arm to keep her from moving, and thus hastened the spread of the venom. With his free hand, he tore at the lace of his left boot. But it was badly frayed and snapped in his hand. Hellfire! he groaned in chagrin. He was taking too long. Trembling, he started on the right bootlace.

After a moment, he succeeded in removing it intact.

“All right,” he said unclearly. “I’ve got-got to do something about that bite. First I have to tie off your leg-so the poison won’t spread. Then I have to cut your leg a little. That way the poison can get out, and it won’t hurt you so much.” He strove to sound calm. “Are you brave today?”

She replied solemnly, “Daddy spanked me and I didn’t cry. I ran away.” He heard no trace of her earlier terror.

“Good girl,” he mumbled. He could not delay any longer; the swelling over her skin had increased noticeably, and a faint, blackish hue had started to stain her pale flesh. He wrapped his bootlace around her wounded leg above the knee.

“Stand on your other leg, so this one can relax.”

When she obeyed, he pulled the lace tight until she let out a low gasp of pain. Then he tied it off. “Good girl,” he said again. “You’re very brave today.”

With uncertain hands, he picked up his penknife and opened it.

For a time, he quailed at the prospect of cutting her. He was shivering too badly; the sun’s warmth went nowhere near the chill in his bones. But the livid fang marks compelled him. Gently, he lifted the child and seated her on his lap. With his left hand, he raised her leg until its swelling was only ten or twelve inches from his face. His penknife he gripped inadequately with the two fingers and thumb of his right hand.

“If you don’t look, you might not even feel it,” he said, and hoped he was not lying.

She acted as if the mere presence of an adult banished all her fears. “I’m not afraid,” she replied proudly. “I’m brave today.” But when Covenant turned so that his right shoulder came between her face and the sight of her leg, she caught her hands in his shirt and pressed her face against him.

In the back of his mind, he could hear Mhoram saying, We have lost the Bloodguard. Lost the Bloodguard. Lost. Oh, Bannor! he moaned silently. Was it that bad?

He clenched his teeth until his jaws ached, and the wound on his forehead pounded. The pain steadied him. It held him like a spike driven through his brain, affixing him to the task of the fang marks.

With an abrupt movement, he slashed twice, cut an X across the swelling between the two red marks.

The child let out a low cry, and went rigid, clinging to him fervidly.

For an instant he stared in horror at the violent red blood which welled out of the cuts and ran across the pale leg. Then he dropped the knife as if it had burned him. Gripping her leg in both hands, he bent his mouth to the fang marks and sucked.

The strain of stretching his lips tight over her shin made his mouth wound sting, and his blood mingled with hers as it trickled across the darkening stain of the swelling. But he ignored that as well. With all his strength, he sucked at the cuts. When he stopped to breathe, he rubbed the child’s leg, trying to squeeze all of her blood toward the cuts. Then he sucked again.

A nauseating dizziness caught hold of his head and made it spin. He stopped, afraid that he would faint. “All right, “he panted. “I’m finished. You’re going to be all right.” After a moment, he realized that the child was whimpering softly into the back of his shoulder. Quickly, he turned, put his arms around her, hugged her to him.” You’re going to be all right,” he repeated thickly. “I’ll take you to your mommy now.” He did not believe that he had the strength to stand, much less to carry her any distance at all.

But he knew that she still needed treatment; he could hardly have removed all the venom. And the cuts he had inflicted would have to be tended. She could not afford his weakness. With an effort that almost undid him, he lurched painfully to his feet, and stood listing on the hillside as if he were about to capsize.

The child sniffled miserably in his arms. He could not bear to look at her, for fear that she would meet his gaze with reproach. He stared down the hill while he struggled to scourge or beg himself into a condition of fortitude.

Through her tears, the child said, “Your mouth’s bleeding.”

“Yes, I know,” he mumbled. But that pain was no worse than the ache in his forehead, or the hurt of his bruises. And all of it was only pain. It was temporary; it would soon fall under the pall of his leprosy. The ice in his bones made him feel that the numbness of his hands and feet was already spreading. Pain was no excuse for weakness.

Slowly, he unlocked one knee, let his weight start forward. Like a poorly articulated puppet, he lumbered woodenly down the hillside.

By the time he reached the tree-it stood black and straight like a signpost indicating the place where the child had been bitten-he had almost fallen three times. His boots were trying to trip him; without laces to hold them to his feet, they cluttered every step he took. For a moment, he leaned against the tree, trying to steady himself. Then he kicked off his boots. He did not need them. His feet were too numb to feel the damage of hiking barefoot.

“You ready?” he breathed. “Here we go.” But he was not sure he made any sound. In the fever which clouded his thoughts, he found himself thinking that life was poorly designed; burdens were placed on the wrong people. For some obscure reason, he believed that in Banner’s place he could have found some other answer to Korik’s corruption. And Bannor would have been equal many times over to the physical task of saving this child.

Then he remembered that Mhoram had not told him any news of the Giants in connection with Korik’s mission. Sparked by the association, a vision of Gallows Howe cut through his haze. He saw again a Giant dangling from the gibbet of the Forestal,

What had happened to the Giants?

Gaping mutely as if the woods and the stream and the little girl in his arms astonished him, he pushed away from the black tree and began shambling along Righters Creek in the general direction of the town.

As he moved, he forced open his caked lips to cry aloud, “Help!”

The child had said that her parents were a long way away, but he did not know what distances meant to her. He did not know whether or not her parents were anywhere near the Creek. He did not even know how far he was from Haven Farm; the whole previous night was a blank hurt in his mind. But the banks of the stream offered him the most accessible route toward town, and he could think of nothing to do but move in that direction. The girl’s pain was increasing. Her leg was blacker every time he looked at it, and she winced and whimpered at every jolt of his stiff stride. At intervals she moaned for her parents, and every moan made him gasp out like the jab of a goad, “Help!”

But his voice seemed to have no authority, no carrying power; it dropped into silence after him like a stillborn. And the effort of shouting aggravated the injury to his mouth. Soon he could feel his lip swelling like the girl’s leg, growing dark and taut and heavy with pain. He hugged her closer to him and croaked in grim, forlorn insistence, “Help! Help me!”

Gradually, the heat of the sun made him sweat. It stung his forehead until his eyes blurred. But it did not touch the cold in his bones. His shivering mounted. Dizziness dismembered his balance, made him reel through the woods as if he were being driven by a tattered gale. Whenever he stepped on a pointed rock or branch, it gouged far enough up into his arches to hurt him. Several times, his joints folded sharply, and he plunged to his knees. But each time, the dark wound he carried pulled him upright again, and sent him forward, mumbling past his thick lip, “Help me.”

His own swelling seemed to take over his face like a tumour. Hot lances of pain thrust from it through his head every time the ground jarred him. As time passed, he could feel his heart itself trembling, quivering between each beat as it laboured to carry the strain. The haze of his fever thickened until at odd moments he feared that he had lost his sight. In the blur, he quailed away from the dazzles of sunlight which sprang at him off the stream; but when the creek passed through shadows, it looked so cool and healing that he could hardly restrain himself from stumbling into it, burying his face in its anodyne.

Yet all the while he knew he could not deviate from the strait path of his trek. If he failed to find help for the child, then everything he had already done for her would be useless, bereft of meaning. He could not stop. Her wound would not tolerate his futility. He saw too much of his lost son Roger in her bare shin. Despite the nails of pain which crucified him, he lurched onward.

Then in the distance he heard shouts, like people wailing for someone lost. He jerked to a swaying halt on stiff legs, and tried to look around. But he seemed to have lost control of his head. It wobbled vainly on his neck, as if the weight of his swelling threw it out of joint, and he was unable to face it in the direction of the shouts.

In his arms, the girl whimpered pitifully, “Mommy. Daddy.”

He fought his black tight pain to frame the word, Help. But no sound came between his lips. He forced his vocal cords to make some kind of noise.

“Help me.”

It was no louder than a whisper.

A sound like hoarse sobs shook him, but he could not tell whether they came from him or from the girl. Weakly, almost blindly, he straightened his arms, lifted the child outward as if he were offering her to the shouts.

They became a woman’s voice and took on words. “Karen! Here she is! Over here! Oh, Karen! my baby!” Running came toward him through the leaves and branches; it sounded like the blade of a winter wind cutting at him from the depths of his fever. At last he was able to see the people. A woman hurried down the side of a hill, and a man ran anxiously after her. “Karen!” the woman cried.

The child reached out toward the woman and sobbed, “Mommy! Mommy!”

An instant later, the burden was snatched from Covenant’s arms. “Karen. Oh, my baby,” the woman moaned as she hugged the child. “We were so frightened. Why did you run away? Are you all right?” Without a glance at Covenant, she said, “Where did you find her? She ran away this morning, and we’ve been frightened half to death.” As if this needed some explanation, she went on, “We’re camping over there a ways. Dave has Good Friday off, and we decided to camp out. We never thought she would run away.”

The man caught up with her, and she started speaking to the child again. “Oh, you naughty, naughty girl. Are you all right? Let me look at you.”

The girl kept sobbing in pain and relief as the woman held her at arm’s length to inspect her. At once, the woman saw the tourniquet and the swelling and the cuts. She gave a low scream, and looked at Covenant for the first time.

“What happened?” she demanded. “What’ve you done to her?” Suddenly, she stopped. A look of horror stretched her face. She backed away toward the man, and screamed at him, “Dave! It’s that leper! That Covenant!”

“What?” the man gasped. Righteous indignation rushed up in him. “You bastard!” he spat belligerently, and started toward Covenant.

Covenant thought that the man was going to hit him; he seemed to feel the blow coming at him from a great distance. Watching it, he lost his balance, stumbled backward a step, and sat down heavily. Red pain flooded across his sight. When it cleared, he was vaguely surprised to find that he was not being kicked. But the man had stopped a dozen feet away; he stood with his fists clenched, trying not to show that he was afraid to come closer.

Covenant struggled to speak, explain that the child still needed help. But a long, stunned moment passed before he was able to dredge words past his lips. Then he said in a tone of detachment completely at variance with the way he looked and felt, “Snakebite. Timber rattler. Help her.”

The effort exhausted him; he could not go on. He lapsed into silence, and sat still as if he were hopelessly waiting for an avalanche to fall on him. The man and woman began to recede from him, lose solidity, as if they were dissolving in the acid of his prostration. Vaguely, he heard the child moan, “The snake bit me, Mommy. My leg hurts.”

He realized that he still had not seen the child’s face. But he had lost his chance. He had exercised too strenuously with snake venom in his blood. By degrees, he was slipping into shock.

“All right, Mhoram,” he mumbled wanly. “Come and get me. It’s over now.”

He did not know whether he had spoken aloud. He could not hear himself. The ground under him had begun to ripple. Waves rolled through the hillside, tossing the small raft of hard soil on which he sat. He clung to it as long as he could, but the earthen seas were too rough. Soon he lost his balance and tumbled backward into the ground as if it were an undug grave.