Free Revenge of the Rose by Michael Moorcock Page B

was lost in blackness. It was into this abyss that water poured with
such relentless celebration and when Elric looked up he gasped. Only at that
moment had he seen the causeway overhead—a causeway that curved from the
eastern cliff of a great bay to the western cliff—the same causeway, he was
sure, that he had seen earlier. Yet this could not be made of beaten mud. The
mighty curving span was woven of boughs and bones and strands of metal
supporting a surface that seemed to be made of thousands of animal hides fixed
one on top of another by layers of foul-smelling bone-glue—utterly primitive in
one way, thought Elric, but otherwise a sturdy and sophisticated piece of
engineering. His own people had once possessed similar ingenuity, before magic
began to absorb them. He was admiring the extraordinary structure as they rode
beside it, when Wheldrake spoke up.
                 “It’s
no wonder, friend Elric, nobody chooses to consider the river route below what
is, I’m sure, the thing they call the Divide.”
                 And
Elric was forced to smile at this irony. “Does that strange causeway lead, do
you think, to the Gypsy Nation?”
                 “ Leads to death, disorder and dismay; leads
to the craven Earl of Cray, ” intoned Wheldrake, the association sparking,
as it did so often, snatches of self-quotation. “ Now Ulric takes the Urgent Brand and hand in hand they trembling stand,
to bring the justice of the day, the terrible justice of the day, to evil
Gwandyth, Earl of Cray. ”
                 Even
the admiring Rose did not applaud, nor think his verse appropriate to this
somewhat astonishing moment, with the roaring river to one side, the cliffs and
the chasm to another; above that a great causeway of primitive construction
stretching for more than a mile from cliff to cliff, high over the water’s
spray—and some distance off the wide waters of a lake, blue-green and dreamy in
the sun. Elric yearned for the peace it offered. Yet he guessed the peace might
also be illusory.
                 “Look,
gentlemen,” says the Rose, letting her horse break into a bit of a canter, “there’s
a settlement ahead. Can it be an inn, by any happy chance?”
                 “It
would seem an appropriate place for one, madam. They have a similar
establishment at Land’s
End , in my last
situation …” says Wheldrake, cheering.
                 The
sky was overclouded now, dark and brooding, and the sun shone only upon the
far-off lake, while from the chasm beside them came unpleasant booming noises,
sounds like wailing human voices, savage and greedy. And all three joked
nervously about this change in the landscape’s mood and said how much they
missed the easy boredom of the river and the wheat and would gladly return to
it.
                 The
unpainted, ramshackle collection of buildings—a two-storey house with crooked
gables surrounded by about a dozen half-ruined outhouses—did, indeed, sport a
sign—a crow’s carcass nailed to a board. Presumably the indecipherable
lettering gave a name to the place.
                 “ ‘The
Putrefied Crow’ is good enough for me,” says Wheldrake, seemingly in more need
of this hostelry than the other two. “A place for pirate meetings and sinister
executions. What think you?”
                 “I’m
bound to agree.” The Rose nods her pale red curls. “I would not choose to visit
it, if there were any choice at all, but you’ll note there’s none. Let’s see,
at least, what information we can gain.”
                 In
the shadow of that causeway, on the edge of that abyss, the three unlikely
companions gave their horses somewhat reluctantly up to an ostler of dirty,
though genial, appearance, and stepped inside “the Putrefied Crow,” to look
with surprise upon the six burly men and women who were already enjoying such
hospitality as the