Crispin's Army

Every now and then during the day, when Crispin feared that the number of people climbing the ladders would have loosened the spikes holding them in place, he called a halt and shifted each ladder to a new spot. And still they kept coming.

Looking up he gazed again at the strange spectacle of the never ending file of men, women and children trailing up across the expanse of snow, stark as soot on whitewash and quite alien in this place where human beings simply did not belong.

Charlie, Mina, Arne, Nold and Elizabeth had resumed climbing almost at once, taking up positions at the head of the column. Crispin, Josie, Tana, Cath, Gus and Simone, together with Karl and Frances, had remained to watch their troops pass, and were now at the rear of the column.

At last, late in the day, they were able to gather up their burdens and join the tail of the human serpent winding to infinity in front of them. As they began trudging uphill, Gus moved awkwardly, his face lined with pain.

Simone stepped up beside him. “Can I take your pack for you, Gus?” she inquired.

Gus forced a smile. “No. Thanks. You’ve got enough of your own to carry. But...” he hesitated shyly. “If I might just lean on your arm a little, that might do something to take the weight off this leg.”

Simone was happy to oblige, and together they shuffled up the mountain, plodding along through a furrow in the snow carved by the nearly ten thousand feet that had preceded them that day.

Crispin was preceded in the line by a pert young woman with a snub nose and unruly blonde hair that poked from beneath a sheepskin lined bonnet of village manufacture. She seemed delighted to be walking in Crispin’s shadow, and when they stopped to draw breath, she only expended more telling him that she had heard so much about him, and how she and her husband - who was walking ahead of her - supported everything he was doing and were proud to be a part of it all, and how much they were looking forward to getting back to Urbis, no matter what state it was in, and starting afresh.

After the grim events of the past few days, the woman’s twittering adulation came as a pleasant relief to Crispin. She spoke back over her shoulder to him as they continued walking, and Crispin, feeling deadly tired, wondered how she managed it. He felt a tug on his pack and found Josie giving him an odd look and tut-tutting him. Did she think the woman was flirting with him? They were certainly bizarre circumstances for a flirtation. The woman was telling him virtually her whole life story, and he was letting it wash over him, a breathless babble to which he paid little heed, satisfied simply to place one foot in front of the other at her heels.

As night began to fall, people began to set up camps randomly across a broad area of the mountain slope, digging holes and trenches into the snow and covering them over with animal skins to provide rudimentary protection from the cold. There was no fuel for fires, but here and there laser weapons could be identified by patches of phosphorescence in the dark as they were used to melt snow for drinking water. The travellers found themselves drinking copious amounts as dehydration threatened.

Crispin shivered. The all-pervading cold was his most persistent memory of his nights in the mountains, and he wondered why his fate kept drawing him to this most inhospitable place. He also wondered how many more would die of exposure before they reached Urbis.

This thought haunted him as he drifted into sleep in the depths of a snow cave he shared with Josie, Karl, Tana, Cath and Frances. When he awoke again in the dark, it was the sound of grief which once again fell on his ears.

He was already on his feet when Josie urged him to stay put. “I’ll go,” she insisted.

“I’ll come with you,” said Cath. “I’ve had some experience of grief counselling.”

“Thanks,” said Josie, and together they made their way through the tunnel to the outside world.

Crispin lay back on the bed and sighed deeply.

“Tell me your troubles,” said Tana in the darkness. There was real empathy in her voice. It brought flooding back to Crispin memories of the time they had spent as husband and wife. It seemed so strange to be here now, in this dark, intimate space, which they shared with two sleeping children, and yet to be separate.

He thought about his troubles for a moment, wondering how he could ever express them. “It’s hard,” he concluded. “It’s hard not knowing whether all this is going to result in anything, or whether everything these people are sacrificing will count for nought.”

Tana pondered this. “That woman you were talking to yesterday. What was she saying?”

Crispin smiled. He knew Tana had answered the question he had been asking himself, indeed, she had shown that the answer was there, staring him in the face. “She was talking about how she and her husband were going to rebuild the city and rebuild their lives.”

“So they aren’t worrying about whether it’s worthwhile or not,” Tana concluded. “They’re just going to get on with it. And I’d wager that almost everyone else here feels the same.”

“Even those who’ve lost...?”

“Even those. Once they’ve come to terms with their loss.”

“So you’re telling me,” said Crispin, “that I should let everyone else sort out their own destinies.”

“Exactly,” said Tana. “I believe Josie has been trying to tell you the same thing for some time now.”

Still smiling, Crispin lay musing on the ability of women to be so much more in control of things than he. He was about to say something to that effect when he heard the deep, steady rhythm of Tana’s breathing as she slept.

Crispin was himself asleep when Josie and Cath returned. Without looking at his watch, he was aware that they had been gone a long time. He heard Tana stirring as the others made their entrance.

“What news?” said Crispin.

“Eight dead so far,” Cath replied simply. “All children bar one, a middle aged man. I say so far, because there are some other youngsters who look very weak.”

“Eight dead!” cried Crispin, aghast.

“That’s pretty good going,” Cath reassured him, “considering how many average, unfit people you’ve got here.”

“Are they blaming me?” Crispin asked anxiously.

“No, they’re not,” Cath said calmly. “They’re not blaming anyone, unless, privately, they blame themselves. So put down your burden of guilt, and let’s get moving, so we can get to somewhere warm.”

Crispin gave a little chuckle. “Well, that’s all three of you now who’ve said the same thing to me.”

“So do it!” Josie laughed.

Crispin emerged from the snow cave into a world of pale grey and white. After the darkness of the snow cave, even this muted light made his eyes water, and he stood blinking, taking in what little there was of his surroundings to take in.

“Heavy cloud, isn’t it?” said Josie, clapping him on the back.

They shouldered their bags and trappings and began walking up the mountain again. Grey figures emerged from the all-enveloping fog and became identifiable at close quarters as individual men and women, forming up little by little into the familiar column to take advantage of the path that had been carved through the knee deep snow by the advance guard.

“I hope someone at the front has a compass,” Cath remarked. “Though I suppose it doesn’t really matter. We keep going up till we reach the top, then down the other side.”

Crispin felt strange, absorbed into the body of what was, to some extent at least, his own army. He felt as if he should be at the front, giving direction, but as Cath observed, the direction was self-explanatory, and the army moved of its own volition. He had been the catalyst that had brought it into being, but for now he had no particular role to play.

Around midday, if the position of the watery luminescence over their heads was any guide, Crispin and the women caught up with Gus and Simone, moving more slowly than the mass of people as Gus hobbled along gamely on his wounded leg, still leaning on Simone for support.

“I think I’m going to develop a permanent lean,” said Simone with an amiable twinkle in her eyes.

For a woman with such a slight frame, Crispin thought, she seemed to be surviving the rigours of the journey remarkably well, carrying her own pack and propping up Gus with his on the steep climb. So much depended, he reflected, on one’s inner disposition, recalling his own determination to survive when it seemed he was staring death in the face.

Crispin, Tana, Josie and Cath took turns to support Gus, who declared that his leg, if not getting better, at least wasn’t getting worse, and gave Simone some relief. While Tana and Josie were helping Gus, Crispin took the papooses containing each of his children from their respective mothers, clutching the tightly wrapped bundle to his chest as a kind of counterweight to the pack on his back.

Towards the end of the day, it began, perversely, to grow lighter. The fog became thinner, and the travellers were gradually able to perceive more of the surrounding landscape. The column could be seen for a greater distance ahead and behind.

It became evident that they were climbing above the level of the cloud bank, and slowly emerging into a landscape of dazzling sunlit white, punctuated by the gaunt black masses of mountain crags capped with snow, marching away to right and left. The sun was behind them, casting long dark shadows, and when they had risen completely above the cloud, they looked back to see it lying like a silent ocean behind them, with mountain peaks thrusting through it like islands. Further off, the cloud formed peaks of its own, great sculptural monoliths so solid in appearance that it defied reason to consider that they were indeed the same vapour that the army had just walked through.

The sun slowly descended into the sea of white, tinting it first with rosy pink and then progressively deeper hues to a fiery orange. As it did so, the walkers became aware that the slope beneath their feet was beginning to level off. They had reached the top of the pass. Some people halted and drew to one side of the trail to dig whatever shelter they could, on a flat surface for the first time in many days. Most, however, wished to press on a little further, and as they did so, a murmur of expectation filled the air. If the air was clear the next day, they might catch the long awaited first glimpse of the city that was their home.