Chapter 3 Trapped
“Don’t panic!” Roland told himself as he careened into a leaf-glutted gully and dashed up the other side into a thick stand of maples, out of sight of his compassionate executioners. As their cursing grew fainter he tried to settle into a rhythmic gait. Experience had taught him that a controlled pace would cover ground more efficiently than wild thrashing. But every creaking of a branch or rustle of leaves brought an image of being hauled into the torture chamber of the Devil Throat, a character so sadistic that his own men had felt compelled to kill an innocent man out of sheer mercy, and then his feet quickened to
their own pace. Behind the terror of being caught in some psycho’s private wilderness lurked the greater horror--that he was lost in eternity, the butt of some supernatural prank.
No plan came to mind other than escaping. On and on he ran, weaving through dogwood and birch, tearing through brambles and nettles, barely noticing the thorns and woody knobs that tore at his arms and face. Sweat glued his jeans to his thighs and stung the fresh cuts on his arms and face. He ran steadily, hoping that order and coherence would eventually return, if only he could keep a fingernail grip on his wits.
Now and then he imagined a break in the terrain just over the next rise. But it was always an illusion, and he felt as if he were running through a repeating pattern of wallpaper. Only gradually did he become aware of a sound like a steady wind rushing through the trees. All at once, he broke through a thicket near a stand of maples and barely stopped himself from hurtling into space. For a harrowing second, he tottered on a bank high above a wide rapids. Far below, the river tumbled over chunks of speckled granite, kicking up white crowns of foam.
In that moment, a snatch of conversation came back to him.
“What are you doing on the river island?”
The significance had failed to register until now. But far downstream the forest receded. The rapids opened up into a wide expanse of water that ended abruptly at what was likely, given the noise and mist that arose from that direction, some kind of falls. An island? Stuck in the middle of a river? If that was the case, then what was the point of running? I'm trapped!
As he gaped helplessly at the churning water, the music of doom sang in the distance, obscured by the rushing river.
Hounds were baying.
Never had Roland heard a lonelier, more chilling sound. His pursuers were tracking his scent with dogs and would soon pin him to this very spot. This time he could expect no reprieve.
The baying increased, each bark driving the shaft of fear deeper into his soul. Roland stumbled over the mushroom-ringed remains of a tree stump, splintering rotten bark in all directions. Pausing for breath, he saw ahead of him an enormous tree that had fallen and now hung out over a narrow stretch of the river, held by a few roots that clung tenaciously to the earth while the rest dangled in the air. Green leaves clustered along several branches, evidence that the old giant still had a pulse. If only it could have stretched all the way across the river! If only there were some way across!
Like King Arthur's sword rising from the depths of the lake, a rope sprang out of the river, flinging silver water droplets into the air.
At first he was not sure of what he was seeing, not only because of the glare of sunlight on the water, but because such a miracle was, of course, impossible. Yet there it was: a rope stretched out from a main branch of the tree, which hung nearly halfway over the river, to some anchorage point on the far side.
The barking of the lead dog leapt a tone as it caught sight of its quarry. Taking their cue, the trailing pack yammered with renewed enthusiasm.
Roland wasted no time quarreling with the absurdity of a rope popping out of a river exactly when and where he needed it. In the grand scheme of things, was it any more bizarre than anything else he had gone through in the past hour? Rationality had abdicated its rule over the universe, leaving the range of possibilities limitless and explanations pointless. Frantically, he scrambled onto the fallen tree and shuffled along the trunk. He paid no attention to the height above the river, nor felt any sense of danger from falling until he reached the rope that hung over open water. Having imagined himself crossing hand-over-hand with no great difficulty, Roland found that he had been misled by the easy illusion of adventure films. The far bank lay well out of reach. Although he worked out with weights on occasion, he was neither a climber nor a gymnast, and he suspected this rope business was beyond his abilities.
Despair gripped him as he contemplated a possible, no, likely, fall to the boulders and rapids below. I lose my grip and I’m dead.
While he debated whether to abandon the effort, a dun-coated hound burst into the clearing, barking hoarsely, tongue lashing from side to side, with its canine posse yowling hoarsely in hot pursuit. Spurred by desperation and the absence of alternatives, Roland swung out onto the rope and started to pull himself across. He knew better than to look at the roaring rapids beneath him. But progress was painfully slow. Barely a third of the way across, his shoulders began to tighten. His leaden arms quivered. He swung one foot over the rope, then the other. Resembling a starved, hairless sloth, he tried to shinny along upside down as his arms screamed for relief.
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“Aha! There he is!”
“Hah! Look at him. He ain’t going nowheres!”
“We got us a fish on a stringer!”
With his back to the shore, Roland could not have seen his assailants even had he dared open his eyes. At his wits end, he suddenly remembered what had happened with the rope that he had apparently conjured out of thin air when he needed it the most. In light of recent events, magic seemed to be a serious option. Take me to the other side! I need to get across the river!
Nothing happened. He opened his eyes to find himself still hung out on a rope high above a raging rapids, muscles burning with fatigue, with a squadron of armed men standing on the near shore, laughing at him.
Futile as it was, he resumed his crawl and wrung a few more inches out of the rope.
“Hey! He’s gettin’ away! Stop him!”
“How?"
“Crawl out and fetch him back, you idiot!”
“What?! S’pose I was to fall in the water and drowned?”
“Shoot him then!”
Roland braced himself for the arrow that would end his life.“No! Don’t shoot!” he pleaded.“Please! I haven’t done anything!”
But his cries were lost amid the loud and increasingly frantic debate over how to capture him. Although in no shape to guess its significance, he detected terror in their voices at the possibility that he might elude them.
“Quick! Do something before he gets here!”
“Don’t let him excape!”
“For God’s sake, do something!”
“Here, this’ll settle . . .”
“No!”
“You stupid dumbass!”
The rope jerked violently. For an instant, Roland experienced complete weightlessness. Then churning water and jagged rocks zoomed toward him. He braced for the impact, unaware that he was still clutching the rope in a death grip. As his toes touched the water, the rope stiffened. Friction scorched his palms. Somehow he hung on, and the rope dragged him through the water, avoiding all but a few glancing blows from the boulders, until his momentum slowed.
It worked! The magic worked again!
Shocked by the cold water, battered by the current and rocks, he let go of the rope and reached for the shore that was only a few arm-lengths away
Bad move! The force of the rapids wept him away head-over-heels. He thrashed to the surface and gained a tenuous handhold on a mossy rock. Gripping with all his might, he held on against the current just long enough to position himself for a kick off the rock toward a quieter backwater pool. There he grabbed an exposed root to keep from being sucked downstream.
As he clung to his anchor in the gentler current, a whisper of wind flashed by his nose, followed by the thump of an arrow burying itself in the clay bank. Suddenly discovering an untapped reserve of strength, he lurched out of the water and scrambled up the slick bank, spraying mud while he clutched at grass tufts for support.
Although the archers on the far bank screamed curses at him, none could hit Roland as he scaled the bank and dove into the underbrush. He rolled behind the solid shield of a cottonwood where he gasped for breath. The rapids appeared to thwart his tormentors, and he felt he had a few moments to recover before dashing off and putting further distance between himself and danger.
While he was lying there, the curses and shouting abruptly stopped. He could hear nothing but the steady noise of the river.
Roland peeked around the tree. His blood froze as he saw someone, better dressed than the others, walk through a gauntlet of minions who stood frozen in place. None would match his disdainful stare. He was a smallish person with a pasty complexion and skin peeling everywhere on his face. He had no eyebrows and squinted continuously. All in all, he looked something like a lemon that had sat in the sun for several days. Yet he clearly inspired fear in those who surrounded him.
This new arrival studied the scene--the river, the rope, the arrows in the bank. For a moment he seemed to be staring straight at Roland, who instinctively ducked back behind the cottonwood.
Nothing happened. Nobody said a word, or even moved.
Curiosity gnawed at Roland, who eventually risked another peek around the tree. For the rest of his life, he would regret giving in to the urge. The pasty man approached one of his subordinates with icy deliberateness. The victim of his wrath cowered and backpedaled, pleading for mercy.
The aggressor thrust out his hand and grasped the groveling man by the throat. With stunning power he lifted his victim off his feet. He walked him back to the edge of the steep bank and stopped. Holding the pleading, kicking man over the water, he glared across the river at Roland, as if he could see him through the leaves. Roland could feel the searing hatred even from that distance.
With one hand still squeezing the unfortunate underling’s throat, the captain drew a long sword from his scabbard with the other. Slowly he raised the blade until it pointed directly at Roland, who felt himself pinned in place, like a butterfly stuck to a mounting board. Staring straight into Roland’s eyes, the lemon-faced captain threw his victim backward. The man fell, arms windmilling in futile attempt to gain balance. His cry of terror turned to agony when he struck the rocks in the rapids below. Roland felt sick as he watched the man disappear into the foam, his last weak plea for help swallowed up in the roar of the rapids.
An even more sickening thought struck him. Was that Curly Red or Crabford who now lay broken and drowning in the river? The simple, decent men who had taken pity on him?
He looked back to see the sword and the malevolent glare still fixed at him. With an inhuman voice that cut through the rush of the rapids, as chilling and grating as fingernails raked across a chalkboard, the captain rasped, “You will BEG for the mercy that I just showed that fool!”
A wave of pure terror washed over Roland as he felt the presence of something far more sinister than anything in his experience. Sweat dripped off his temples, yet he was frozen in place. Hearing that inhuman rasp, he needed no introduction to this cruel overseer. “Devil Throat,” they had called their boss, and Roland would swear it was no exaggeration. Only with the greatest effort did he manage to wriggle free of his new sworn enemy’s hypnotic spell, and bolt into the woods.
Before he had taken 20 steps, however, he was rocked back on his heels by another shock. As if they had materialized out of thin air, two dark men with long braided hair stood before him. Other than the well-worn moccasins on their feet and buckskin leggings, they wore no ornaments over their bronzed and weathered skin.
Roland saw a bow. And knives.
Unlike the men on the island, these two registered neither fear nor surprise upon seeing him. In their impassive faces he detected no inkling as to whether their presence was a good thing or the worst fate that had yet befallen him.