Crispin's Army

Untidy, streaky cloud at a lower level prevented those gathered in the pass from getting that longed for first glimpse of their home, but they were contented, knowing that it was there, that the remainder of their journey to meet it would be downhill, and that they could expect to get progressively warmer as they advanced. There was a general sense of being cold, hungry, thirsty, dirty and on the verge of sheer physical exhaustion. The sense of sharing, of supporting each other emotionally and often physically was what had brought them through to this point, and those who knew of Crispin’s exploits in detail marvelled at his ability to reach here alone and in total ignorance of what lay ahead.

Crispin was publicly modest about his achievements, but privately gratified by the acclaim.

“He’ll be unbearable now,” Josie complained to Charlie in front of him, wearing a broad grin as she spoke. “His head will swell up like a balloon, I know it will.”

Crispin sought to rein in the enthusiasm of the crowd by reminding them that there was still great danger ahead, and to temper their delight by being wary. The allusion to dangers he had already faced added further to his heroic status in the eyes of many.

With the start of a new day, and with Crispin and his immediate entourage at its head, the column began to move off down the Urbian side of the range. For safety, people were roped together in groups of ten or fifteen, and Crispin used the benefit of his previous experience to skirt precipitously steep slopes. There were enormous crevasses in the ice, however, some of which seemed to extend for kilometres. Where there was clearly no possibility of walking round an end, the rocket lines were used again, this time in conjunction with a breeches buoy apparatus, but even when a dozen of these had been set up, the delays were tedious, and those who had crossed could only walk as far as the next such scar on the landscape and wait.

Two entire days were spent in this manner, with the pulleys swishing back and forth along the lines, ferrying people across the emptiness, their legs dangling in the gaping maw. Even the construction teams that had been left behind to build towers and wayside shelters on the other side of the mountain had had time to catch up with the back markers.

Crispin began to wonder if it was ever going to end. It seemed as if, with the end of their journey almost within reach, the mountain was going out of its way to make things difficult for them.

But by the end of the second day, the crevasses had been traversed, and Crispin had high hopes that on the following day they would be able to descend below the snow line, and the worst that nature could throw at them would be behind. He was becoming yet more impatient, for each night that passed brought a few more deaths of adults and children in the bitter cold.

The next day dawned, bringing with it brilliant blue skies and a warming sun. It was hard to be sure, but those who rose earliest swore that they could discern, through the haze, the flash of sunlight on the distant sea. Cynics responded that it was more likely to be the flash of gunfire in the city.

“Do we still need to be roped together?” people asked.

Crispin was inclined to err on the side of caution, but Josie prevailed. “Surely the dangerous part is behind us?” she said, and Crispin agreed, if somewhat reluctantly.

The army moved off again, delighted, after so many delays, to be moving, and moving downhill. They were marching down a broad shallow valley which opened out ahead of them, offering tantalising glimpses of a gentler landscape beyond. From first to last the travellers had a spring in their step as they crunched through the snow, basking in the sunshine and smiling as the topography changed. Below them, rocks thrust their heads through thinner snow, and a belt of trees loomed.

Catastrophe came without warning. The rhythm set up by so many tramping feet triggered a cracking of the underlying ice, and the ground simply opened up. The muffled beat of footsteps on well trodden snow gave way to the cracking of immense slabs of ice beneath them, the swish of a tide of loose snow cascading into a black space that had appeared out of nowhere, and echoing screams that issued hollowly from under the ground as men, women and children plunged into the dark fissure. And then there was the most deathly silence.

How many had gone? It was impossible to tell, but there was suddenly a huge gap in the line where the abyss had opened up. Those immediately either side of the gap scrambled to their feet, the narrowness of their escape having not yet come home to them, and crouched, peering over the edge.

“Get away!” Crispin barked, stumbling back up the slope. “Get right away! The edges are likely to break off!”

Coming to their senses, onlookers hurriedly retreated from the brittle rim.

And then, as the gasps of horror subsided, voices were heard, feeble cries from within the icy maw, two distinct voices, one male and one female, crying for help.

Disregarding his own warning, Crispin ventured closer to the fissure.

“Is anyone there?” he demanded.

“Yes,” came a faint reply. “Two of us.”

“Are you badly hurt?” Crispin called.

“Yes. Neither of us can move.”

“We will be down to get you in a moment,” Crispin announced. He turned to Charlie, who had arrived next to him.

Charlie raised an eyebrow and pointed a questioning finger at himself. “We?”

“You’re happy to volunteer for this, aren’t you?” said Crispin with a trace of a smile.

Charlie exhaled long and loud. “Sure. Let’s do it.”

They got roped up, and two teams manned the ropes. From the voices of the man and the woman, those on the surface established their position. Blankets were laid on the edge of the crevasse to keep the ropes from fraying on the ice. Side by side, they edged towards the crevasse, while those holding the ropes dug their heels into the snow like parallel tug-of-war teams, and prepared to take the strain in an emergency.

As he was about to sink from view, Crispin took a last look at the crowd gathered opposite, and saw the chatty blonde woman and her taciturn husband staring at him, ashen faced.

And then he was gone, submerged into an icy chimney. He had a crowd on the ice above to support him and pull him out, and Charlie, slipping down the face of the ice a few metres to his left.

“How’s it going, Charlie?” he called.

“Oh, okay, I suppose,” Charlie responded drily. “But I can think of places I’d rather be.”

“You’ll need to come this way a bit more,” said Crispin. “You’re too far over.”

“Charlie here,” Charlie called to the watchers whose heads were outlined against the strip of sky over his and Crispin’s heads. “My team move a couple of metres to the right.”

Hurriedly, more blankets were laid, and the rope moved over, so Charlie came almost to within arm’s length of Crispin.

They descended slowly and cautiously through a gap scarcely wide enough to accomodate them. And then suddenly their eyes perceived something in the gloom below them. Slightly to Crispin’s right, the ice face swelled outward a little, narrowing the gap still further. There was something wedged in the gap. A body.

“Stop,” Crispin commanded those on the surface, and his descent halted as he was level with it.

A teenage boy lay face up, like a puppet bereft of its strings. Blood trailed into his open, staring eyes from a massive wound on his temple, and then dripped into the blackness below.

Crispin reached over, reluctant to touch, and closed the dead boy’s eyes.

“Continue,” Crispin yelled.

They found the two survivors some fifteen metres down, when Crispin was beginning to fear that he and Charlie would run out of rope before they got to them. The man was solidly built, in his mid-forties, the woman slimmer and a little younger. Both were jammed between the tapering sides of the fissure as the boy was, but to either side of them the gap was wider, and most of the victims had fallen much further.

As he looked past the couple, Crispin could make out in the gloom at least a couple more broken twisted bodies trapped in the ice.

Cautiously, he and Charlie manoevered themselves into positions either side of the man and the woman and wedged themselves firmly across the gap. Then they untied the ropes from about their own waists and passed them under the armpits of the two semi-conscious survivors.

“Thanks,” said the man as Crispin knotted the rope across his chest. “But what about you two?”

“We’ll be okay,” said Crispin with a reassuring smile. “Once you two are up top and safe, they’ll come back for us.” He glanced across at Charlie. “You ready?”

“Yep,” said Charlie.

“Haul away,” Crispin called. “But gently.”

The ropes tightened. The woman howled in pain.

“Gently!” Crispin insisted.

They could not pull gently enough for the woman, and she moaned repeatedly as she was lifted, swaying like a rag doll. The man held on limply to the rope in front of him, and he too was lifted, slowly and steadily, up through the crack in the ice.

Crispin and Charlie half sat, half squatted, a gaping void beneath them, and watched the diminishing figures rise in jerky motion up towards the welcoming daylight. In silence they waited.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” said Charlie at last.

“So do I,” said Crispin, and they laughed.

After what seemed an eternity, when cramp in their legs was becoming decidedly painful, the ropes came snaking back down to them. They gratefully attached themselves once more to their lifelines, and were pulled back out of the frozen tomb to be greeted by an anxious crowd and the reviving rays of the sun.

Cath conducted a quick examination of the man and the woman, but declared that without instruments she could only guess at their injuries. She concluded, however, that the man’s legs were broken, probably in several places, the woman had broken ribs, together with, in all likelihood, a punctured lung, and that both were severely concussed. What other internal injuries they might have was, she added, anybody’s guess.

Makeshift litters were cobbled together out of animal skins and odd bits of wood to transport the two the rest of the way to the city. In the meantime, the breeches buoys were resurrected, and those cut off when the crevasse had opened up in front of them were transported across, a process that absorbed the remainder of the day and part of the evening.

Crispin raised the possibility of retrieving those bodies that were accessible, in order to give them a proper burial, but the concensus of opinion in his immediate circle was that too many lives had already been wasted. Crispin was forced to agree.

“I’m pretty sure they are past caring,” Gus observed. “And I imagine their relatives would be reluctant to have them pulled out of the ground just to be put back into it somewhere further down the track.”

Well after dark, the march continued. They entered the forest and left the snow behind them, sensing the relief of walking on dry, firm ground. Before long, they came to a ridge of softly rolling hills. Crispin had been in a very similar spot once before. He did not need to be told what lay beyond the ridge.

Josie took Crispin’s hand. “Come and look,” she urged. He followed her to the crest of the ridge. Beyond it lay the coastal plain occupied by the vast human conglomeration that was Urbis.

It was late in Lilymoon. Crispin and his followers had been on their travels for three weeks. With their goal in clear sight, a mixture of physical exhaustion and strained emotions took their toll, sapping strength and draining resilience.

Crispin’s army fanned out along the ridge and stared in mute contemplation at the city spread before them, and many wept openly. There was relief at having survived the crossing of the mountains, belated mourning and regret for those who had not made it, there was a simple accumulation of fatigue, and there was the grim prospect that lay below.

Crispin recalled how he had looked for the first time at the lights of the city. Most of those were now gone. Huge areas were blacked out, or had only a sprinkling of lights where previously there had been entire constellations. A different light now shone in Urbis: here and there, the glow of large fires could be seen, burning out of control. And elsewhere, the flashes and the thunder of artillery fire being exchanged testified to the fact that the travellers were about to enter a theatre of war.

Josie came and sat on the grass beside him, and he put his arm round her shoulders and squeezed her to him.

“It looks bad down there,” he said softly. “Certainly very different from the last time I saw it from up here. I wonder who’s winning?”

“We’ll find out in the morning,” Josie murmured. “Come and get some sleep.”

Crispin pressed his fists into his eyes. “I feel so tired,” he yawned. “And yet, I get the feeling that it’s still going to be a long time before we can get any proper rest.”

She took his hand and stroked it with all the tenderness she held in her heart for him. “I know,” she breathed. “All the more reason to come to bed now.”

With weapons in their hands, they came like a tide into the streets on the outermost fringe of the city. The old houses that had once exuded life and warmth were now either deserted, doors hanging open and windows smashed, or else boarded up, with glints of light showing through the gaps between the boards to indicate that these houses were occupied by terrified people.

“Well,” said Crispin sombrely, “we’re back.”

End of ‘Crispin’s Army’.