Haven by Adam Roberts

Author:Adam Roberts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Rebellion Publishing Ltd

PART TWO

Learning to Read

Chapter Ten

FOR HALF A day Davy lived inside a bag. It might have been longer than half a day. Maybe not so long. It was hard to tell time. At one point he flopped out of consciousness altogether—the exhaustion, and hardship, not to mention the fear, provoking a seizure. But most of the time he was aware and conscious. It’s just that the thing he was most conscious of was the canvas bag they had fitted over his head. The scratch of its weave. The smell of it. The way it amplified the sound of his breathing.

His hands were cuffed behind his back. At the beginning he’d been slumped over the saddle on his belly, like a sack, but this posture had not only been intensely uncomfortable, he had actually found it difficult to breathe. When the riders got off the causeway, and out of the rain, they stopped for a breather, and one of the women checked on him. “I don’t like his colour,” she said, and the others all gathered round. He was lifted down and propped against a moss-wet log. Finally he could catch his breath.

They gave him water, and a little flatbread to eat, this latter damp and flavourless. He looked around him, but with an anxious panicky crudeness of observation that registered very little except the wind-rumpled stretch of water in front of him and the general rain-sog of everything. The rain had stopped. The sun was low in the sky.

Then they put the hood back, hoisted him onto the saddle again, but in a proper upright position this time. They rode on. Sitting was easier on his lungs, and less painful; although the fact that he wasn’t able to grasp the rider in front to steady himself meant that he kept swaying backwards, and feeling the dagger-panic that he was about to topple off. He was wet, and scared, and exhausted, and he was like that for a long time.

The next thing he knew his hands were cuffed in his lap, which meant he could tuck his fingers into the trouser-top of the rider in front of him. His back and shoulders felt sore. He flexed and stretched, and there was a palpable pain back there. Since he didn’t recall being taken off the horse, having his hands untied, and retied in the front he reasoned that he had had a fit and fallen off the horse, and that the women had repositioned him when he was unconscious.

Senses working overtime.

They rode for an incalculable time. Finally they stopped, lifted Davy down and took off his hood. It was night. At least it wasn’t raining any more. The sky was clear and cold, and the stars mingled with the prickles of light buzzing on the pricky surface of his own retinas. To his left and right profoundly purple-black columns blocked out tree-shapes against the starry sky. He was in some kind of open space, and the moon was shining. In the pale light it was hard to get a clear sense of the dimensions of where he was.

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