Chapter 56
Dallmin was waiting at the far end of the antiquated timber bridge that crossed the river at the southern end of the state park. He looked, if anything, even more tired and stressed than when he had left.
‘You came on your own. That is well. It is easier for me if we can speak freely,’ Dallmin said as soon as Bane was close enough to hear him over the sound of the water.
‘You want to talk to me? I’m not surprised that you have questions. I’ll do my best to answer them, but first I need to know, is Jake close by? You said you found him.’
‘He was not hard to track. I know how to find people. I have been playing that game for much longer than he has. I will take you there as we talk,’ he suggested, throwing his pack into the boot of Bane’s car and slamming it closed.
Heading downstream, Dallmin led him along an overgrown animal trail that forced them both to duck through tunnels of thick scrub. It felt like boot camp again. Blackberries snagged his clothes every few steps, but ahead of him, Dallmin managed to stride past them all as easily as if he was walking down a bitumen road. Lainie was not entirely wrong when she jokingly described him as an elf. He even managed to chat as he manoeuvred through the tangled bushes.
‘I need to understand Lainie’s job. She will not let me go home because I am tainted. Annie once explained to me that the taint will damage the Life Fruit, and the Trees. But what if I choose not to eat? Will she let me return?’
He was setting a cracking pace and Bane had to scramble a little to keep up. Enforced idleness over the last few weeks had softened him.
‘No, mate, she can’t. She doesn’t have the authority to let you through, even if she wanted to. It’s not her choice to make.’
And yet even as he said it, he wondered. The sword hadn’t flared to life until she had forced Sarah to let her go. While their skin touched it had remained quiescent. Lainie had been adamant that she’d had no choice other than to abandon her to the sword’s judgment, and yet she’d also been ready to take full responsibility for her actions. So which was it? Did she choose or was she forced? There was always a choice, apparently.
Dallmin paused, briefly. ‘She told me that the sword with flames would kill me if I tried to cross, but then I saw it stop moving when Nathaniel was born. The Cherubim have power over the sword, correct?’
‘Actually, it looked to me more like it had power over them,’ he refuted, panting slightly. ‘Noah couldn’t move, remember? Even when his newborn son was struggling to breathe. Not even they understand the sword very well, so I’m afraid I can’t help you much there.’
The man walked on, stooping deftly under a dead cape wattle. ‘I am thinking that perhaps the sword could clean me of the taint. It has great power, and was put there by the Creator. I do not believe He intends for me to remain in this place. Will Lainie help me to see if the sword will clean me?’
Bane stopped dead in his tracks, straightening up so fast that he got showered with crumbly bits of dead wattle sticks. Lainie had only just begun to come to terms with what had happened to Sarah Ashbree. What would it do to her if Dallmin went the same way? He swallowed down the lump in his throat.
‘Please don’t ask her to do that. I know her. If you asked, she would try, but if the sword harmed you she would never forgive herself.’
Dallmin’s closed expression almost made it look like he didn’t believe what he was being told, but Bane knew that was not in his nature.
‘Then I will not ask,’ Dallmin assured him, continuing to power his way through the thick scrub. He didn’t speak again, and his silence felt wrong. The man had been exiled from Paradise, and there was nothing Bane could say that would help him deal with his grief, so he just followed along behind, trying to mimic the way Dallmin moved. The man slipped through the bushes like they were moving aside for him, only to flick back in Bane’s face a second later. It felt like the bushes themselves were grieving along with the elf. And like they wanted to punish Bane for not getting him home sooner.
He should have done better. Three years of training to become the best Guardian he could be, in the fragile hope that he might be offered a second chance, and he’d totally blown it. He’d been warned about the danger. He’d felt it, the day Jake had discovered Lainie was back, and ignored it as an overreaction. It was time for him to get it right. This was his chance. He would find Jake and use the skills he had worked so hard at developing to find a safe way to end the threat. Captain Hughes, his training officer, had been right. The purpose of all that training was so that no one would have to sacrifice themselves for a cause. Heroes were only useful once, and Lainie needed him to stick around because God knew she didn’t always have the most sensible attitude toward her own safety. He would find a way of getting the job done without getting hurt.
A small skink disappeared under a rotten log at his feet, hiding, watching. The whole bush felt like it was watching him. Waiting to see if this time, he would finally get it right.
Currawongs played noisily in the pale afternoon sunshine but no movement came from the lonely campsite. Damp earth reflected the eucalypt scent of autumn. There was a stacked pile of supplies under a tree covered by a blue plastic tarp, and a played-out campfire had a tiny curl of smoke drifting from a dying ember. There was no left-over firewood. Did that mean Jake wasn’t planning to stay long, or was it just laziness? An ominous gloom filled the small clearing that was felt more than seen.
Silently, from the safety of a thick clump of tea-tree, the two men watched in tight discipline for a full five minutes before Bane decided it was safe enough to check under the tarp for weapons. Scanning the trees thoroughly, both high and low, he circled around, staying in the scrub for as long as he could, and then crept into the clearing, keeping watch on the surrounding bush as he lifted the plastic. There were no weapons under it.
Instead there was a compulsion-driven drug-crazed psychopath.
Leaping up toward his throat, Jake roared in livid fury. By ducking sideways as best he could, Bane managed to avoid the blade that was thrust straight at his face, but the guy’s shoulder still took him squarely in the chest, knocking him to the ground. Trained reflexes took over and he rolled quickly toward Jake’s legs and managed to trip him. As Jake fell he put his hands out, screamed again and collapsed, clutching his injured left shoulder in a very satisfying way. Not giving him a chance to recover, Bane punched him full in the face. It only seemed to enrage his attacker further. Like some sort of feral beast, Jake slashed wildly with his switchblade, managing to catch Bane’s forearm. Pain lanced through him and he fought hard not to flinch. Instead he used the snag in the blade’s motion to gain the precious moment he needed to slam his other fist into Jake’s ribs. With a swift motion, he retrieved the blade from his opponent’s sweaty grasp and in another second, he had Jake firmly pinned. The guy spat out a clump of mud.
‘Keep still!’ Bane commanded, holding the point of the blade against Jake’s right shoulder in a threatened replication of his recent injury.
Sensing someone behind him, Bane started to tell Dallmin to stay back, but all he saw out of the corner of his eye was a small cast iron frypan swinging toward his head.
When Bane opened his eyes sometime later, he was lying in the dirt with his wrists taped together around the trunk of a young rivergum. It was raining again and he stared stupidly at the blood dripping from his arm, trying to remember what had happened. There’d been a knife fight, and now he was tied to a tree. That wasn’t right. It must be some sort of new training exercise. Some new trick the Captain and Tim had devised to test him.
The world danced along with the bright spots in his vision, and no matter how hard he blinked, it wouldn’t stop. How had this happened? He never lost when there were knives involved. Someone must have cheated. His head hurt a lot, and the world was spinning worse than if he’d been healing Lainie. Forcing himself to focus, he reflexively felt for where she was.
The moment he did, the sound that tore from his throat sent birds in nearby trees scattering, and should have set the valley on fire.