Twenty-four - Oracle 2 - Knowledge

The chain lashed across Sigonius’ face and a dull ringing filled his ears. He roared with all the strength he could muster but could not even hear his own voice. “This too,” he thought, “this too the wretch has taken from me.” He pulled himself upward, sword held firm in his grip, only to feel the chain connect with his wrist, the length of it swinging on impact to wrap itself along the length of his arm. The pain sang like a hymn along his fingers, uncurling despite his resolve, letting the sword drop to the ground beneath him. The chain tugged his arm suddenly and he found himself flat on his face, every inch of him hurting. All the strength and resolve of the desert turned to dust within him and he found himself cursing, wondering how this possibly could have happened. They had survived so much torment, faced and defeated so much in order to cross the endless dunes, only to be defeated here by one man. One man and his chain.

Sigonius rolled onto his side, eyes squinting as he watched his companions charge valiantly forward. The cloaked man stood before his barge and smiled. It was a wooden barge, the perfect size to house Sigonius and his companions and ferry them across the river. Hinged on a length of mighty chain, the barge was the only way across the mighty torrent, a river of raging waves and deadly currents. On this side there were the endless sands of the desert, and there, visible across the way, were lush trees and green hills. Sigonius remembered Anjou’s words when they had arrived. “It looks like Paradise,” he had said. Later he even swore his eagle eyes had spotted beautiful maidens running naked in the shadows of the distant trees. But they could not reach it – could not cross the river.

They had walked as far as they could in either direction, but there was no safe crossing, no narrowing of the stream. How many desert animals had they seen, jumping into the waters in a desperate attempt to swim to the other side. The creatures were sucked under before they had paddled as far as a yard. No, the only way across was the barge, that was obvious to all of them. Only the wretch would not take them. Or rather he would, but at too high a price.

Sigonius watched the cloaked figure in action and cursed once more. The ringing in his ears had begun to subside, but all it allowed him was to hear the screaming of his men. A long length of chain was held in each of the barge man’s hands and he swung them like whips. As Sigonius watched Huges slid beneath one swinging chain only to race head first into the other. Baudoin swung his sword in an arc, fending off the metal with mettle of his own, but only advanced two paces before the chain wrapped about his ankle, snake like, and brought him down. Anjou’s normal jollity was lacking completely as he barreled forward, bull like in his frustrated resolve. But even with Vespucci at his side the two lasted only seconds before both chains wrapped them together, crushing the two bodies until they screamed with bones on the verge of breaking. Then they were released to fall panting to the hot sandy ground once more. As Sigonius forced his aching body to rise the barge master spoke in his customary impassive voice.

“I have already told you what I need,” he stated, chains clanking as he shook them warningly. “You know the price of crossing, either pay it and move on or accept your fate and make the most of the desert lands. For if you choose not to pay you will remain here forever.”

“We have gold,” Sigonius hissed angrily as his followers clumsily crawled back toward him, “we have learning from our land, songs and stories from our travels, weapons we have forged. Any or all we have offered in trade yet you refuse us – you refuse me!”

“That is my right,” the barge master replied, the faint hint of a smile visible upon the shadowed features beneath his hood. “I sense you are not used to being refused. Is this the way you normally respond? When you are told no, do you always take by force?”

“It is not your refusal that drew this reaction,” Sigonius snarled, “it is the price you demanded. We are free men – we are not for sale.”

“Everything is for sale, and the more desperate your plight becomes, the more willing you will be to pay any price,” spoke the cloaked man.

“Never,” spat Sigonius.

“You may journey down the river and you may journey up the river, and never will you cross,” laughed the cloaked man, pulling the hood from his head to reveal his face. The barge captain had no eyes, just sunken pits, his skin pulled tight over an angry skull; any moisture in the man’s body had long departed. “You can call upon your winds and whatever other mischief you have, but never will you cross this river and reach the far shore with all your companions by your side.”

Sigonius peered at the man before him; he had bested them, reduced them to children with his chains, made them feeble and weak. His eyes, or rather the sunken cavities where once eyes had been, clearly had shown the barge captain enough. Mischief is what he had spoken of. Mischief was how he had summed up the totality of Sigonius’ power. Sigonius pulled his cloak about him, his head still hemorrhaging from the blow he had received. Peace had failed, violence had failed, another route would have to present itself, another means to continue this journey.

“We’ll take our leave barge master,” spoke Sigonius, helping Anjou to his feet. “I hope your future fares will prove to be more to your satisfaction.”

“Fool,” spoke the barge master, replacing his hood and returning to sit upon the edge of his vessel. “Travel for an eternity, ring your body of every resource of this world and beyond, and eventually you will still return to this point.”

The five companions motioned to move off, ignoring the man and his rantings. Determination would carry them forth. Hadn’t they already survived the worst, proved their worth.

“Never has anyone come from the desert. None have ever asked passage, it has been so for time immemorial,” laughed the man as they departed, his words coming out half choked with laughter as he found joy in his own joke.

Anjou turned to see the man one last time before he was lost to sight. He still sat upon the edge of his barge, but his shoulders sagged now as his eyes turned to the feast of green and lushness of flesh across the river. Anjou’s own shoulders sagged with the same longing, as he thought of spending more time in the seemingly unchanging desert.

***

Baudoin lay on his side spitting out water while Huges loosened the rope that ran across his chest and below his arms. Anjou turned to Sigonius, breathless from his efforts.

“The river,” he began, gasping for air, “it is too powerful for us. It seems so still, but underneath it is a raging torrent with no direct current. Could you feel its pull upon the rope?”

“It is chaos unleashed,” mused Sigonius. “It will be the death of us if we try to swim across.”

Huges stood, satisfied that Baudoin would recover. “We crossed the desert, surely we will not let this river stop us.”

“It is more than a river,” spoke Baudoin from the ground, now propped up on his elbows.

“So was the desert,” retorted Huges.

“How long has it been since we moved on from the barge?” asked Vespucci.

“Five days,” answered Huges.

“Five days,” reiterated Vespucci. “Five days and it may as well as be a year. We cannot see the other side any longer.”

“We are missing something,” stated Anjou bluntly.

“Let us take our rest; perhaps sleep will bring the answer,” commented Sigonius, hoping that some sleep may repair the frayed edges of his companions’ resolve.

***

Sigonius thought he was the first to wake, but when he roused and checked on the others he found that Anjou was missing. It did not take long to track him however, his footprints fresh in the desert sands that stretched hot and yellow to the very edge of the river. There Anjou sat, legs hanging over the side of the bank, staring at the deadly cool of the impossibly blue waters rippling below. “It taunts us,” Sigonius thought, not for the first time. It made him angry. The whole situation made him so angry inside. He sat himself beside Anjou, saying nothing, staring at the water with his follower. He sensed that where he was raging inside, like the invisible undercurrents before them, Anjou was instead like the surface of the lake, cool, calm and quiet.

“You said we were missing something,” Sigonius stated softly. He let the words hang in the air between them. In crossing the desert the silences between the companions had come to mean more than words at times. Anjou didn’t answer directly. He did not need to; they understood each other well enough after all this time.

“I’ll do it,” he said simply. “The quest is more important than any single member of this crusade. We must pay our dues sometimes. Even warriors cannot win every battle without counting some scars.”

“No,” Sigonius replied, his eyes on the water before them. For a time there was silence, then Anjou tried again.

“He wants to leave,” he whispered, “that is what we were missing. He does not try to defeat us, to keep us from our path, but without our help he cannot follow his. He wants to leave; the payment of one is simply his way of keeping the crossing manned and attended.”

Sigonius turned to face his follower, his eyes wide as he considered the words. He found there was nothing he could think to say in reply.

“I know you Sigonius,” Anjou smiled at last. “In all the years we have studied together, fought together, travelled together, never have you found it easy to admit defeat. But sometimes you must accept that there is nothing you can do. But that does not mean there is not something that I can do. Sometimes a sacrifice must be made – a real sacrifice. I do not mind – I do not sell myself cheaply. What we stand to gain is more than shall be lost.”

The two sat together silently until the others awoke, then together the five of them made their way back toward the barge master once more.

***

They talked little on the way back, five long days of trekking that in many ways they hoped would take far longer now. Knowing the farewell that would face them on arrival, Sigonius found himself hoping the trek would never end. He wracked his brain, desperately trying to think of another way, a different solution. But no matter how he turned it, over and over again in his mind, he kept coming back to face Anjou’s logic. He kept realizing that sometimes he had to accept the wisdom of others and that although some answers were not the ones he wanted, they were the only answers nonetheless.

Vespucci, the youngest of their number, spent some time arguing with Anjou that he should be the one to offer to meet the barge master’s terms. Anjou would hear none of it. Youth, he had argued, was a coin worth keeping a little longer. Anjou’s brother Baudoin had pleaded with him for some time, asking him to reconsider. “This is rash action,” he had argued plaintively, “you say this is the only answer to the barge master’s riddle – but I say it is folly my brother – folly!” Yet in the end even he had to admit he could see no other way. Huges was the last to talk to Anjou and by then they could all see the barge master ahead in the distance, a single cloaked figure upon the horizon, in the same place and position as when they had left him almost ten days previous.

“Anjou, my friend,” Huges had smiled as they walked, “I salute you, not only as a great warrior but as a great man. I have seen you fight, I have seen your will and determination, seen you smile and laugh and buoy our spirits even in the harshest of times. But now I see something else in you – wisdom – and that makes me happier than I can say. You have seen something that we have not; you perceive something that we still struggle with. You are calm and of one purpose. I do not wish to lose you from the quest, but this wisdom I see in you is something I have come to trust. I do not know what you plan exactly, but I do trust that you know what you are doing and with all my strength I intend to support the doing of it, my friend and comrade. In this, as in all things, you have my support as well as my thanks.”

It was the words that Huges spoke more than anything else that finally resolved Sigonius’ own mind. Before they reached the barge master he spoke quickly and briefly to Anjou, the man he thought of as his follower, the man he knew that this time he must allow to lead.

“Anjou,” he said quietly, “in this I bow to your wisdom my friend. Do as you think best – lead us to the other side.”

Anjou smiled, a broad and genuine smile, nodding once in curt reply. Then he stepped forward, walking ahead of the party, making his way up to the cloaked man alone.

***

“Swordplay you call it?” scoffed the old warrior.

“Yes. I have no father to speak of and I would have you teach me how to use a sword,” scolded the upright Sigonius.

“Go away and stop wasting my time,” the old warrior said rudely as he turned to play dice with his companions again.

“I can pay you,” enticed Sigonius.

The old warrior turned towards him. A purple scar ran down from his forehead to his mouth; his eye was discoloured and his lips had been fused shut in one corner by a hot iron. In essence, half of the warrior’s face didn’t move very much.

“Look at me boy. Is this how you want to end up, so ugly that the only women that’ll have you are whores or bitches from another town with a knife at their throat. Believe me when I say there is nothing for you here. Be gone with you.” The old warrior spoke angrily while shoving Sigonius away, but Sigonius quickly regained his balance. He remained standing behind the older man and said nothing. He watched while the old warrior turned from him again and resumed his game.

Throw after throw he watched the dice leave the cup and hit the rough tabletop. The men playing were at once anxious, excited, filled with fear and joy in equal measure; they all wondered who the Gods would favour this day in their game of chance. Eventually, with the moon ebbing and a new day’s sun about to rise, the contest was finally over; the old warrior counted his winnings into his purse.

The few gamblers who remained looked dejectedly into their slowly emptying mugs, thinking of what could have been. The old warrior stood to leave but then noticed that Sigonius was still standing behind him.

“What do you want whelp?” he asked.

“A wager.”

“No, it’s time for bed now, or perhaps a whore if she isn’t too bow legged after a night’s work.”

“I can match your purse, all or nothing, one throw.”

“One throw?” asked the old man warily.

“One throw. I’ll even let you choose odds or evens.”

“No,” said the old warrior, “I’ll not take your coin this day.”

“I’ll take the bottom quarter, one in four chance that I’ll win,” offered Sigonius.

“Very well then,” said the old warrior with a frown, throwing his purse onto the table and reaching for the dice. Sigonius had moved to the opposite side of the table, some of the other gamblers, their interest now peaked, were paying great attention.

“Your purse boy.”

Sigonius placed his own purse down upon the table.

“Roll!” commanded Sigonius.

The four dice came out of the old warrior’s cup. Old and worn, he claimed they had been carved from the bones of some long lost kill.

The mark for one came up on the face of the first die. Then another one came out on the second. The last two dice came to a halt together, only after bumping each other, and they too came up with ones upon their faces. The old man sat unmoving. The joy of a few moments ago was now gone; he had lost it, he had lost it all to a whelp.

The old warrior reached out for his purse, but Sigonius was too quick and snatched it from his grasp.

“You lost, don’t make it worse.”

“I earned that money,” spat the old warrior. “All night long I worked and earned that money.”

“You drank, caroused and gambled all night and managed not to get your throat cut open, but earned this money? No. No, but you were favoured by the gods.”

The old man stared Sigonius up and down.

“You are angry,” stated Sigonius simply.

The old warrior continued to stare, his scar now a deep purple, rather than its usual fleshy pink.

“Teach me sword play and I’ll give you both purses.”

The old man got up and turned away. He began walking towards the rising sun, before pausing, stopping fully, then finally turning back. “Chasing women and sucking on a teat is play. What you will learn from me has no place in play.”

***

“I meet your price,” Anjou verily shouted the words as he stood before the barge master. The man had been swinging his chains in circles, preparing for another joust, but Anjou’s words caught him off guard. The chains fell heavily upon the sand beneath the barge master and his sunken face of shriveled pain broke out into a grimacing smile.

“For true?” he whispered, as though afraid he had heard it wrong. “You would do this, knowing what it means?”

“Yes,” Anjou replied, quietly this time. “I understand and I will do it – provided you give passage to my comrades.”

“Give passage, ha, not I, oh no – you will do that my friend, oh yes, that shall be your job from now on, yours now, ha ha!”

The laugh broke like a bubbling wave from the throat of the cloaked man, a giant wracking hilarity that seemed like to break his shriveled frame in two. It echoed out across the desert lands, over the endless dunes they had crossed, merging with the sounds of the swirling waters of the river before them, stretching out and on in every direction. Eventually, when he had calmed himself, the grinning barge master waved the five men forward excitedly.

“Come,” he smiled, “come, come. Oh, but I thought this day would never arrive. All these years and not a single soul has sought to cross the river – now there are five of you and one willing to stay – at last, oh at last! Come then, climb aboard – soon enough we shall all be on our way!”

Sigonius nodded and one by one they climbed aboard the barge, Vespucci first, then Huges, then Sigonius himself. Baudoin was the last, giving his brother a final embrace before stepping aboard, his eyes dark with misgivings. Only Anjou remained ashore now with the barge master, staring into his excited eyes.

“You seem eager to complete the transaction,” Anjou stated calmly, “shall we get this done then?”

“Yes,” came the eager reply, “oh yes, after so long… after so many years…”

Sigonius watched from the barge as the cloaked figure dropped the chains from each of his hands, but now Sigonius saw the truth of it. At the end of each chain was a manacle that had been bound by iron to the man’s wrists. The weapons he had used to defeat them were more than they seemed, not just weapons of defense but imprisoning shackles as well. He was no master of barge at all, but simply a prisoner of his task. The ties of strength were also bonds that could not be broken. Sigonius smiled as the pieces fell together and he found himself praising Anjou silently for his knowledge and understanding.

They all watched silently as the discarded chains began to shift and writhe upon the desert sands like angry snakes, clanking and shaking where another beast might hiss and spit. Anjou stood unmoving as they writhed upward toward him, the manacled ends snapping like fanged mouths as they launched themselves closer and closer.

“Yes,” the barge master urged excitedly, “go on – go on, he agreed, he made the choice, go on now, it is his turn to wait, his to stand, his to watch, to grow old waiting, to lose hope watching the horizon, his turn now, not mine, not mine ever again… go on now – go on!”

The snapping iron finally leapt and Anjou cried out in sudden pain as they constricted about his wrists. The chains writhed once more, excitedly, then fell still. Anjou slumped, a free man bound. Before him the cloaked figure laughed aloud and began to dance upon the spot.

“Ha ha – yes, cold their bite is and heavy the chains, but yours now, not mine oho, not mine anymore! Ha – free at last, after all this time! Finally, finally I knew this day would come at last – at last at last at last ha ha!”

None of them spoke as the cloaked figure shuffled his pathetic jig back and forth, his broken laughter riding across the waters. Finally, when they could bear it no more Sigonius spoke.

“Anjou, come, ferry us across, it is time we were on our way.”

The cloaked man stopped, looking uncertainly at the men upon the barge.

“But he cannot go with you,” he muttered uncertainly, “he is bound now, bound to stay, that was the deal.”

“Yes,” Sigonius stated carefully, “bound to the barge, not to this side of the river. He is our payment and our passage now. He will take us to the other side.”

Anjou nodded once, then stepped up onto the barge, dragging his chains behind him. As the cloaked figure moved to join them Sigonius drew his sword in one fluid movement and held it firm at the man’s throat, barring his way.

“No,” Sigonius hissed, “not you.”

“What?” The cloaked man seemed confused. “This is my barge, I need it to cross to the other side. I am free now – I can go where I will.”

“Yes,” Sigonius agreed, “free, with a whole desert to explore. Every waterless stretch, every hot aching mile, every scorching sand dune is yours to wander wherever and however you will. But this barge is yours no more and this crossing is barred to you. You made a deal, you took my man. You are free, yes, but doomed nonetheless, for Anjou will never let you cross. He paid your price – but you can never pay his – never!”

The cloaked figure did not seem to know what to say. He wavered uncertainly upon the water’s edge, his arms twitching as if trying to summon back the chains which had once made him unbeatable. Sigonius kept his sword outstretched as Anjou set the barge in motion, sheathing it only when they were reaching the halfway point and the cloaked man was reduced to a distant outline. He saw the distant figure suddenly collapse to his knees and heard a bitter wail of such pain that even the rushing waters beneath them seemed to stop their stirring for a moment to listen to the echoing anguish. None of them spoke.

“A clever man,” Anjou stated quietly, “would have waited until after crossing before he made the exchange.” He turned to Sigonius with a smile playing upon his lips. “You can be sure I’ll not make that mistake, when my time comes.”

Sigonius nodded and returned Anjou’s smile with one of his own. The knowledge was bittersweet, but every true lesson always was.

“When your time comes,” Sigonius echoed, but his words were softly spoken and by that time the barge was in the midst of the river, water splashing over them. The far side was closer now, growing closer still, and he needed to think on what waited for them ahead. There were dark shadows beneath the great green trees, and their real journey had only just begun.

***

Sigonius looked on his weeping and blistered hands.

“Don’t fret pup, they’ll harden,” mused the old warrior.

Sigonius took hold of his sword again, despite the pain, emboldened by the old warrior’s words. “I’m yet to beat you.”

“And you never will. You hold too hard to that sword and forget everything around you,” explained the old warrior.

“What do you mean?”

“How did I defeat you this morning when you had me going back towards the well?” the old man asked.

“You grabbed a bucket and threw it at me,” answered Sigonius.

“And what about before lunch, when you were chasing me through the olive grove?”

“You climbed upward and kept smacking my hands every time I tried to follow,” came Sigonius’ response.

“And pray tell, how did I defeat you after lunch?”

“You didn’t. You were at the cantina.”

“Rubbish, you could not find me and so I won again.”

Sigonius could feel his cheeks flushing with redness.

“My young pup, make no mistake, you can use a sword. But you need to start thinking. Then you’ll win more.”