The White Mountains (The Tripods) Read online

  I did not see her to speak to for the rest of that day, but I did not mind this. She had her duty, to preside, to give prizes to the victors, and for me there was excitement enough in the tournament itself, in cheering on those I had come to know, and in the whole atmosphere of feasting and merrymaking.

  There was only one chilling moment. As the second session of the day began, there was a strange sound far away, which became louder. It was a constant repetition on five notes, a metallic clanging, and although I had not heard this particular call, I knew it could only be a Tripod. I looked in the direction from which it was coming, but the castle stood in the way and I could see nothing. I looked also at the people around me, and saw that none showed more than a mild interest: the contest going on in the ring, with four knights on each side, continued to hold their attention. Even when the hemisphere rocked around the outline of the castle, and the Tripod came and stood towering over the field, its feet planted in the river, there was no sign of the fear and uneasiness which shivered along my spine.

  It was plain that this was not an unusual event, that a Tripod always attended the tournament and that they found no cause for alarm in it. Of course, they were more accustomed to the sight of the Tripods than we had been at Wherton, where we only saw one on Capping Day. Almost every day one saw them here, singly or in groups, striding across the valley. I had grown used to the sight, too—at that distance. Being right under its shadow was different. I looked up at it, fearfully. I noticed that, around the sides of the hemisphere and in the base, were circles of what looked like green-tinted glass. Did it see through those? I supposed so. I had not noticed them before, because at Wherton I had never dared look at a Tripod closely. Nor did I for long now. One of the circles had me directly in its view. I dropped my eyes to watch the tournament, but my mind was not on it.

  And yet, as time passed, my disquiet subsided. The Tripod had made no sound since it took up its position by the castle, and it did not move at all. It was just there, presiding or watching or merely standing up against the sky, and one became inured to its presence, and regardless of it. After an hour, I was cheering on a favorite of mine, the Chevalier de Trouillon, with no thought beyond the hope that, after two falls on each side, he would win the final tilt. He did, and his opponent rolled in the beaten and withered grass, and like everyone else I cheered him to the echo.

  There was a feast that evening, as there would be every night of the tournament, and since the weather was fine, it was held in the courtyard. The household of the Comte, and those knights who had their ladies with them, were seated, and food was brought to them; the rest served themselves from the tables at the side, which were laden with different kinds of fish and meat, vegetables and fruit and sweets and puddings, and where tall jugs of wine stood. (Not a great deal was drunk while we were there, but the knights stayed on after the ladies had gone in to the tower, and torches were lit, and there was singing, and some shouting, until very late.) I could not count the number of dishes. It was not merely the different kinds of meat and fowl and fish, but the different ways each kind might be prepared and sauced. They counted eating a fine art in a way that I do not think even Sir Geoffrey would have understood, and certainly no one in Wherton itself.

  I went in with the ladies, very full and happy. The Tripod was still where it had been all afternoon, but one saw it only as a dark shape against the stars, something remote and almost unimportant. From the window of my room, I could not see it at all. There was the bright shawl of the Milky Way, and the torches down in the courtyard—nothing else. I heard a tap on my door, and called “Entrez!” I turned to see it open, and Eloise slipped in.

  She was still wearing the blue gown trimmed with lace, though she had put the crown aside. Before I could speak, she said, “Will, I cannot stay. I managed to get away, but they will be looking for me.”

  I understood that. As Queen of the Tournament, her position was special. While it lasted, there could be no pleasant talks, no wandering away. I said, “They chose well. I am glad, Eloise.”

  She said, “I wanted to say good-bye, Will.”

  “It will not be for long. A few days. Then, when I am Capped …”

  She shook her head. “I shall not see you again. Did you not know?”

  “But I am to stay here. Your father said so, only this morning.”

  “You will stay, but not I. Did no one tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “When the tournament is over, the Queen goes to serve the Tripods. It is always done.”

  I said stupidly, “Serve them where?”

  “In their city.”

  “But for how long?”

  “I have told you. For ever.”

  Her words shocked me, but the look on her face was more shocking still. It was a kind of rapt devotion, the expression of someone who hugs in secret her heart’s desire.

  Dazed, I asked her, “Your parents know this?”

  “Of course.”

  They had, as I knew, deeply missed their sons, sent away for a few years only to learn knighthood in another household. And this was their daughter, whom they loved perhaps more dearly still, and she was to go to the Tripods and never return … and all day long I had seen them happy and rejoicing. It was monstrous. I burst out: “You must not! I won’t let it happen.” She smiled at me, and gave a small shake of the head, like an adult listening to a child’s wild talk. “Come away with me,” I said. “We’ll go where there are no Tripods. Come away now!”

  She said, “When you are Capped, you will understand.”

  “I will not be Capped!”

  “You will understand.” She drew a gasp of breath. “I am so happy.” She came forward, took my hands and, leaning forward, kissed me, a peck of a kiss on the cheek. “So happy!” she repeated. She went back to the door, while I stood there. “I must go now. Good-bye, Will. Remember me. I will remember you.”

  And was gone, out of the door, her feet pattering away down the corridor, before I could come out of my trance. I went to the door then, but the corridor was empty. I called, but there was only my voice echoing back to me from stone walls: I even took a few steps to follow her, before I stopped. It was no good. Not only because there would be other people there, but because of Eloise herself. “I will remember you.” She had forgotten me already, in any sense that truly mattered. All her mind was concentrated on the Tripods. Her masters had called, and she was going to them gladly.

  I went back into my room, and undressed, and tried to sleep. There were too many kinds of horror. Horror at what had happened to Eloise. Horror of the creatures who could do this sort of thing to others. Horror, above all, at how closely I had come to falling—no, to throwing myself—into something beside which suicide was clean and good. What had happened was not Eloise’s fault. She had accepted Capping as the countless others had done, not understanding and knowing no alternative. But I had understood, and had known better. I thought of the blankness in Beanpole’s face, the contempt in Henry’s, the last time I had seen them, and was ashamed.

  The noise of revelry in the courtyard had long died away. I lay, tossing and turning, and saw a softer wider light than starlight coloring the frame of the window. I halted my thoughts in their futile round of self-accusation; and began to make plans.

  It was dark inside the house as I went quietly down the stairs, but outside it was light enough to see my way. There was no one about, nor would be for a couple of hours, at least. Even the servants slept later during the days of tournament. I made my way to the kitchens, and found one of them snoring under a table; presumably he had been too drunk to go to his bed. There was little danger of him waking up. I had brought a pillowslip from my bed, and I piled remnants from the previous night’s feast into it: a couple of roast chickens, half a turkey, loaves of bread, cheese and cold sausage. Then I went to the stables.

  There was more danger here. The grooms slept on the other side of the horses’ stalls, and while they, too, would have
drunk their fill, a disturbance among the horses was likely to wake them. The horse I wanted was the one I had been accustomed to riding with Eloise, a chestnut gelding, only about fourteen hands high, called Aristide. He was a somewhat nervous beast, but he and I had grown to know each other, and I relied on that. He stood still, only snorting a couple of times, while I freed him, and came with me like a lamb. Fortunately, there was straw on the floor, muffling his hooves. I lifted his saddle from its place by the door, and then we were clear.

  I led him down and out of the gate of the castle before saddling him. He whinnied, but I judged we were far enough away for it not to matter. I tucked the top of the pillowslip under his girth before tightening it, and prepared to mount. Before I did so, I looked about me. Behind lay the castle, dark and sleeping; before me the tournament field, the flaps of the pavilions moving a little in a breeze of morning. On my left … I had forgotten about the Tripod, or perhaps assumed that it would have moved away during the night. But it was there, as far as I could see in exactly the same spot. Dark like the castle; and, like the castle, sleeping? It looked as if it were, but I felt a tremor of unease. Instead of mounting and riding down the broad and easy slope, I led him away along the steeper and more difficult path which wound down the side of the rock on which the castle was built, and came out between the meadows and the river. There a line of trees partly shielded it from the view either of the castle or the metal giant standing sentinel among the rushing waters of the river’s other branch. Nothing had happened. There was no sound but a water bird that croaked nearby. I mounted Aristide at last, pressed my heels into his flanks, and we were off.

  It was true that, as I had said to Henry and Beanpole, although they might get away and their absence not be noticed for a day or two, I would be missed much sooner. Even with the tournament in progress, it was likely that a search party would come after me. Because of this, I had taken the horse. It meant I could put as great a distance as possible between me and any pursuit. If they did not find me within twenty miles of the castle, I felt that I was safe.

  The horse also gave me a chance of catching up with Henry and Beanpole. I knew roughly the route they must take; they had a day’s start on me, but they were on foot. I was less likely now to be troubled by their being better friends with each other than either was with me. I was very conscious, in the gray light of dawn, of being on my own.

  The path led by the riverside for nearly a mile to the ford, where I must cross to the other bank. I had covered about half of this when I heard the sound. The dull clump of a great weight striking the earth, and another, and another. Automatically, even as I glanced back, I was urging Aristide into a gallop. The sight was plain, and horrible. The Tripod had uprooted itself from its post by the castle. It was traveling, steadily and relentlessly, in my wake.

  I remember almost nothing about the next few minutes; partly because I was in such an extremity of fear that I could not think straight, and partly, perhaps, because of what happened after. The only thing that comes back clearly is the most terrifying of all—the moment when I felt a band of metal, cold but incredibly flexible, curl around my waist and lift me from Aristide’s back. There was a confused impression of rising through the air, feebly struggling, afraid both of what was to happen and, if I did free myself, of falling to the ground already dizzily far below me, looking up at the burnished carapace, seeing the blackness of the open hole which would swallow me, knowing fear as I have never known it before, and screaming, screaming … And then blackness.

  The sun pressed against my eyelids, warming, turning darkness to a swimming pink. I opened my eyes, and had to shade them at once from its glare. I was lying on my back, on the grass, and the sun, I saw, was standing well above the horizon. That would make it about six o’clock. And it had not been four when …

  The Tripod.

  The jolt of fear shook me, as I remembered. I did not want to search the sky, but knew I must. I saw blue emptiness, fringed by the waving green of trees. Nothing else. I scrambled to my feet, and stared into the distance. There was the castle, and beside it, where it had stood yesterday, where I had seen it as I led Aristide out of the gate, the Tripod. It was motionless, seeming, like the castle itself, rooted in rock.

  Fifty yards from me, Aristide cropped the dewy grass, with the contentment of a horse enjoying good pasture. I walked toward him, trying to turn the jumble of my thoughts into some kind of sense. Had it been imaginary, a nightmare, dreamed as a result of a fall from the horse? But the memory of being plucked up through the air came back, sending a shudder through me. I could not doubt that recollection: it had happened—the fear and despair had been real.

  Then what? The Tripod had picked me up. Could it be … ? I put my hand up to my head and felt hair, and the hardness of my skull, with no mesh of metal. I had not been Capped. With my relief at that came a quick wave of nausea that made me pause and draw breath. I was only a few yards from Aristide and he looked up with a whinny of recognition.

  First things first. The castle would be stirring, or at least the servants would. It would be an hour or more before I was missed from my room, but there was no time to waste in getting away—I was still within sight from the ramparts. I took the horse’s rein, twisted the stirrup, and swung up into the saddle. Not far ahead the river boiled across the shallows of the ford. I urged him forward, and he responded willingly. Crossing the ford, I looked back again. Nothing had changed, the Tripod had not moved. This time relief was not disabling, but enlivening. Water splashed against Aristide’s fetlocks. The breeze was stronger than it had been, carrying a scent that tantalized me before I remembered it. A bush with that scent had grown on the island in the river, where Eloise and I had picnicked, where we had been happy and at ease and she had talked of the future. I reached the far side of the river. A track led through fields of rye, flat and straight for a long way. I pressed Aristide into a canter.

  I rode for several hours before I thought it safe to stop. The land was empty at the beginning, but later I passed men making for the fields, or already working there. The first I came on suddenly, cantering around a bend marked by a small copse, and I was confused and apprehensive. But they saluted me as I rode past, and I realized they were saluting the saddle, and the fine clothes I wore: to them I was one of the gentry, a boy taking a ride before breakfast. All the same, I avoided meeting people as far as I could, and was glad when I came out of cultivated land into rough rolling uplands, where I saw nothing but sheep.

  There had been time to think about the Tripod—about the amazing fact that I had been caught, and then set free, unharmed, un-Capped, but I came no nearer to a solution. I had to abandon it as one of the incalculabilities that happened with them—a whim, perhaps like the whim that had caused those others to spin around the Orion, howling in rage or glee or some other quite different and unfathomable emotion, and then rocket off across the water, away and out of sight. These creatures were nonhuman, and one should not try to give them human motives. All that really mattered was that I was free, that my mind was still my own and master, as far as circumstances allowed, of my destiny.

  I ate, and drank water from a stream, and mounted and rode again. I thought of those I had left behind at the castle, of the Comte and Comtesse, the knights and esquires I had come to know, of Eloise. I was fairly confident they would not find me now—Aristide’s hooves would leave no trace on the short grass and sun-baked earth, and they could not spare long from the tournament for a pursuit. They seemed very far away, not just in terms of distance but as people. I remembered their kindness—the graciousness and sympathy of the Comtesse, the Comte’s laughter and his heavy hand on my shoulder—but there was something not quite real about the memories. Except of Eloise. I saw her clearly, and heard her voice, as I had seen and heard her so many times during the past weeks. But the last image was the one that came most sharply and cruelly to mind: the look on her face when she told me she was going to serve the Tripods, and said, “I am so h
appy—so happy.” I kicked Aristide, and he gave a snort of protest, but moved into a gallop across the green sunlit hillside.

  The hills rose higher and higher ahead. There was a pass marked on the map, and if I had traveled right by the sun, I should soon be in sight of it. I drew rein on the crest of a ridge and looked down the slope beyond. I thought I saw a gap at about the right place in the line of green and brown, but everything trembled in a haze of heat, making identification difficult. But there was something nearer which drew me.

  Perhaps half a mile ahead, something moved. A figure—two, toiling up from the fold of ground. I could not identify them yet, but who else could it be, in this deserted spot? I set Aristide to the gallop again.

  They turned before I got close, alarmed by the sound of hooves, but long before that I had made sure of them. I came to a halt beside them, and leapt off the horse’s back, even now, I am afraid, proud of the horsemanship I had acquired.

  Henry stared at me, puzzled, and at a loss for words. Beanpole said, “So you have come, Will.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Why, didn’t you think I would?”

  I told them nothing of Eloise, and what had changed my mind. This was not just because I was ashamed to admit that I had seriously thought of staying behind, of allowing myself to be Capped for the sake of the rewards that would follow; though I was bitterly ashamed. It was also because I did not want to talk about Eloise to anyone. Subsequently, Henry made one or two sly remarks which obviously referred to her, but I ignored him. At this time, though, he was still too shaken by my appearance to say much.

  It sounded sensible and well-planned, the way I told it—that I had thought it best to give them twenty-four hours’ start, and then steal a horse and follow them: this gave us all the greatest chance of getting away. I did tell them of my experience with the Tripod. I thought they might be able to cast some light on it, that Beanpole, at least, would be able to work out a theory to account for it, but they were as much at a loss as I was. Beanpole was anxious that I should try to remember if I had actually been taken inside the Tripod, and what it had been like, but of course I could not.