by Andre Norton
Valoris was content to stay with Rhys, who, making the most use he could of his injured arm, was working at arrow shafts. They were, Sarita thought as she led Berry and tried to avoid the leaping lunges of the playful kid, at least eating well.
Her first attempt at snare setting had brought them two leapers. Stifling her disgust, she had skinned and cleaned the catch under Rhys' direction. And, roasted at the hearth, the meat had given them a lift of spirits.
Once in the meadow, she went down on her knees and began searching through the tangled grass. To her delight there were plenty of the berries ready for harvest.
What it was that first warned her she could not say—it was as if very faint and far away a voice had summoned her. She sat back on her heels, shivering.
Three times before in her life she had heard that summons, and each time it preceded disaster. She wondered fleetingly now why she had not heard it when the keep fell. For the first time —greatly daring—she tried to seek the voice even as it sought her.
It was as if someone held a loomed web before her on which there was a faint design. She could see nothing clearly, though the flesh on her sunburned arms prickled as it might in a winter wind. Then she drew in a breath of pure vileness.
Sarita grabbed out for Berry's tether and jerked the goat back toward the brush ringing the meadow. She kicked against the bowl, sending berries flying, as the goat broke away from her, trotting back to her interrupted meal. Sarita next seized upon the kid. Were she to take him, Berry might follow. But the struggle was a wild one, and when a small hoof painfully grazed her chin, she was forced to free him. She huddled behind the brush screen, trying to make herself as small as possible.
As she watched in dumb terror, she saw the bushes on the other side of the meadow shake. A man stumbled out. He fell rather than seated himself on the ground and sat panting. The rough clothing he wore was certainly not any keep livery, nor was he a farmer, not with the heavy sword sheath, empty though it was, hooked to his belt. His jerkin was furred and ill-fitting, his breeches crudely patched.
He was hatless and a wild straggle of hair fell to his shoulders in greasy strings, while his gaunt cheeks were covered with beard. There was a grimy bandage about his head, but his main wound seemed to be in his side, where another bunching of bandage showed beneath his unhooked jerkin. His hand went to that and he bent over, moaning.
Then he coughed and spewed forth clots of blood, sinking forward, in spite of is struggles, to lie facedown. Sarita breathed shallowly. Though Berry had stopped grazing and was watching him, he had not apparently seen the goat. Nor was he moving now.
Berry snorted and shouldered the kid back in retreat toward Sarita. The girl watched the prone body closely. Then she gave a start and her hand went to Rhys' hunting sword, which he had insisted she carry on any venture away from the hut. The bushes were moving again.
8
A second man came tramping arrogantly into the open. This was no wounded straggler, drawing upon his last shreds of strength, rather a huge man carrying a bared sword in one hand. Slung fast to his back was a vicious-looking ax. Like the prey he hunted, he was dressed in ragged castoffs, but added to them was the stained surcoat of a keep guardsman and he boasted three unsheathed knives in a sash belt.
"Hookbeak bait!" His hoarse bellow broke the silence. Then he deliberately kicked the downed man, rolling him over so that he lay face up to the sky. The newcomer dropped to one knee and methodically searched the other, who still lay motionless.
"So you did have it, sneakling!" He held out into the sunlight something taken from beneath the other's jerkin. It gave off flashes of light: a pendant hanging from a chain. Sarita smothered a gasp.
That was a captain's emblem of office. Rhys had said that the plunder from the ambush was to be left for the wolfheads. But the ambush had been days ago. Why—? Or were these ravengers fighting now among themselves over their loot?
The giant gathered the other's belt weapons. With a last kick at the body, he swaggered back into the woods. Sarita felt a strange dizziness—as if that warning of danger had somehow weakened her.
She forced herself to slow and even breathing such as had helped her before. Never had the sendings been so strong before. Nor had she ever mentioned to anyone what she had felt, somehow
guessing from the very first time (it had come to her soon after she had been apprenticed, when a live spark from the fire had blazed on folds of cloth) that this was a secret to be kept.
She was sure that the wolfhead was dead. Berry apparently sensed no danger, already at graze again. She must get back to Rhys. If there were wolfheads in the woods so near, then their safety was only an illusion.
Creeping on hands and knees, trying to move without shaking the bushes, Sarita found the unmarked trail. Getting to her feet, she ran for the hut.
Rhys was sitting in the clearing, knife in hand, but for the moment idly watching Valoris placing twigs and shavings in some pattern absorbing to the youngster.
As Sarita burst out of cover, he was on his feet in an instant, snatching up the sword, which had been resting on the ground beside him. He stared at the girl before his attention shifted quickly to the bushes behind her.
Had she needlessly brought down upon them what he could not handle? She looked completely overwrought. He took a stride forward, but he did not move as quickly as Valoris.
"Saree — Saree!" He laughed and ran toward the girl before Rhys could stop him. Catching the folds of her skirt, he stood smiling widely up at her.
"Saree — ?" His smile was gone; some of her fear must have reached him.
She stooped and drew him into a fierce hug, as if such contact meant safety for them both.
Rhys drew upon the woodsense bred and trained into him. He felt none of that vague warning of ill which had plagued him just before the ambush. Now he caught at her shoulder with the hand of is wounded arm, in spite of the twinge the gesture cost him.
"What's to do?"
She straightened a little. Her tight grip on Valoris was not now to his lordship's wishes and he was squirming. Rhys saw her visibly swallow, then her answer came as a croak.
"Wolfheads — " she stammered.
He stiffened. Were the three of them to be caught now, they had very little hope, but what chance he could give to Sarita and the child he would.
In spite of his pain he shook her. "Take the child —go!"
If she had not been seen, perhaps only heard, he would have a very short time to play rear guard.
However, she was resisting his push. "Dead —" He could feel the trembling of her whole body as he shoved her around from the way she had come.
"One —one is dead!" Her voice scaled up even as he spat: "Quiet!"
Valoris was whining and struck out at her.
"Down!" the boy demanded with all the imperious force of his most contrary will.
"One is dead." Sarita had her voice under control now. "The other one —he went back—that way!" She half turned and flung out an arm westward.
"Where is the dead man?" he demanded.
"In the pasture."
"Take him," he waved toward Valoris, "and get out away from the hut. Hide and keep under cover until you hear me whistle." He pursed his lips to produce the call of a flickwing so expertly that he was answered from the bushes. "If I do not return — " he looked at her straightly—"then pray to the Lady, mistress, and do what you can."
Two separate duties tore at him in that moment. His protection was owed to Valoris and incidently to the girl, but he must know what had driven her to such a flight. He felt he dared not make any decision until he saw for himself what lay in that meadow.
Sarita clapped her hand over the child's mouth and headed for the high-growing brush which ringed the clearing about the hut. Rhys tried to shut off thought of what she could do if he did not return —all his attention and skills must be centered on what lay before him.
By the time he reached the pasture, he was so
mehow sure that the girl was right and there was nothing there to be feared —for the present.
Certainly Berry was browsing contentedly, her kid lying now in the sun-warmed grass, showing no signs of uneasiness. However, on the far side there did lie a body. He edged his way along the green growing wall to reach it.
Had some survivor from the keep taken vengeance?
However, the body seemed to have been roughly searched, which suggested death by the hands of some other member of a pack.
He laid down the sword and rolled the body about under a thick outthrust of briars, hidden as best he could manage. Then he set about tracing the wolfhead's back trail.
To follow that was easy, marked as it was by gouts of blood over which crawled green-bodied flies. There were signs that the fugitive had fallen at least twice. Plainly he had been pursued and now Rhys hunted for signs of that. When he found them, he glanced about quickly, for there were marks of larger and heavier feet both coming and going. The killer had been content to reach his prey and had not gone farther.
The hut was no longer a haven. However, he had never considered it so. They must be moving on.
Now that Sarita had time to catch her breath and think more clearly, she began to hope that the giant had been satisfied with his kill and would not come roving in their direction. She settled herself deep in the bushes, Valoris on her lap.
"Want Hally!" He was growing red in the face and she was afraid that he might burst into a screaming fit.
In desperation Sarita reached up and caught at one of the twigs over their heads. Along it edged a caterpillar, the brown-green of its body so close to the coloring of the twig that it was betrayed only by two bright red spots at the fore-end.
"Look—" Sarita waved the twig before the child. The insect raised its forebody a little, though careful not to loosen its grip on the twig. ''Bug," she whispered. "It is going—"
"Home." Valoris' lower lip quivered and began to pucker. She could only guess what the harsh dislocation of his life had meant to him. "Vally go home too!" Again that beginning pucker.
Sarita dropped the caterpillar-laden twig back into the bush to gather him closer. "Someday, little lordling, someday." She wondered bleakly if such lies were held against one in that final accounting she had been so often warned of when she was younger.
"Want to go now!" She had only time to clap her hand over his mouth again to stifle a rising howl.
"Please, little one — "
He was fighting her with all his strength, trying to escape. Sarita began to rock back and forth.
"There goes the hookyhens . . ." She tried to keep the song to a whisper.
"Off to find little Ben.
They will run and fly and play . . ."
To her great relief the boy stopped his struggling. She had discovered during the past few days that the adventures of the hookyhens (to which she added with her own imagination) somehow had the ability to get his full attention.
Valoris' hand unfolded from fists to clap. "Sky!" he crowed.
"Yes, into the sky," she agreed. "They'll ride a cloud by and by."
"Fool!" That word hissed at her startled Sarita so much her tightened grasp on Valoris brought an instant protest.
Though she could not see him, Sarita knew that Rhys had returned.
"They are coming?" Her heart began to beat wildly again. She did not think she would ever forget that hulking giant. Were he to find them —
"Not yet. But your racket could draw him straight to us. Come, we must make plans so that we will not be caught."
His sun-browned hand thrust through the wall of greenery and closed firmly on her shoulder, compelling her forward so that she scrambled into the open, Valoris with her.
Rhys was not looking at her but rather at the hut. His features were tight.
"We must move on," he said at last.
"Where?" she demanded. "You say that south and north are closed to us by Sanghail, and eastward lie the keep lands which he is surely holding now. To the west are the mountains —the range of the wolfheads!"
"Not directly west, no. Toward the heights, yes." Having seemingly come to a decision, he nodded as if in answer to a thought of is own. "LodenKail. I think that not even the wolfheads range that peak."
"Monster land," she identified from memories of stories told about the hearth at night.
Amazingly Rhys grinned, and years were wiped from his taut, tanned face. "Monster land," he agreed, as if she had spoken of Raganfors, which she now looked upon as a goal of safety.
"People tell tall tales," he continued, "and have done so for years. What is unknown is always first feared, and if it cannot be understood, that fear grows. I am born of this land, I know of beasts roaming in the heights that no prudent hunter will face. But great monsters —no. Two years ago I went with the boundary markers the earl sent to map the upper lands. We climbed LodenKail—at least halfway. It is but a pile of rocks, to be feared only because of avalanches. We saw a fearsome one which tore away a large spur of forest. I saw the track of a snow cat, a quadbear, but nothing else. Wolfheads are superstitious enough to avoid it—and I think perhaps in the far past there was some lord of Var who told the first tale to make sure there would be some unknown menace to keep rovers out of his territory. I know these woodlands as well as my home hold."
"But perhaps the wolfheads know them well also," she dared to comment.
Rhys was frowning again. "Yes. Well." He spoke slowly as if he uttered every word somewhat against his will. "There is something. But I will take sword oath it is not a living, breathing monster." He hesitated for a long moment and then continued. There was a strange expression on his face, as if he were being forced to make a disclosure he dreaded. "We rangers —some of us —" he remembered Gregor and some of the others who certainly had never shown any evidence of such a talent, "can sense when something is wrong—"
Sarita's hand flew to her lips. She could again almost feel that sensation which had startled her in the meadow.
"I spoke once with a scholar sage who was summered here and went boundary marking at the earl's bidding to study and list the living things of this land. He spoke of the fact that certain places exist where events long ago have left a mark which a man cannot see, but rather feels. Also he said that this ability to feel sometimes came in the form of a forewarning."
Rhys' shoulders hunched a little and he darted a quick glance in her direction as if he fully expected to meet with open disbelief.
"A forewarning," she repeated.
Something in her tone brought him to face her squarely. She could feel herself flushing. To betray herself so! His eyes narrowed as he studied her. He asked, "You—you mean you sense things so? At the keep, then — "
Sarita shook her head. "No, not then. But there have been other times, yes. Once there was a fire and I saw—felt—flames before they started up. Then there was the time when a hound kept by the smith in the corner house went mad and ran foaming into the street. But, why did I not feel so in the keep where there the danger was even greater?" She asked that more of herself than him.
He was plucking at his lower lip and seemed to stare beyond her now as if the answer to that might be written on some bush or the wall of the hut itself. And his frown grew deeper.
9
“Mind blinding!" Rhys cried out suddenly. "How else could
we have been so easily taken in ambush?" Rhys remembered that the captain had not appointed any outriders that morning— why?
"Mind blinding?" Sarita did not understand.
"Another thing the sage scholar spoke of," he answered with a near impatient note in his voice. "He said it was a demon-born art whereby one with a strong mind could force upon unsuspecting others feelings and sights he wanted them to have."
"Night tales," Sarita scoffed. She could not accept this anymore than Rhys believed in the Loden.
"Halda reported a traitoress," Rhys reminded her. "Was that wench the only hidden weapon? I say
that this foul taking of Var keep had been long planned. Sanghail himself is reputed to be learned in old lore, caring more for that than honest sword work."
"But in the meadow I felt evil coming; I was not mind blinded then."
"No, perhaps it was meant to hold only for a short time, or perhaps the effect of it wears off the farther one is from the keep. Yes! Before they sprang that ambush I felt something— not quickly enough to warn!"
A new thought disturbed Sarita, making her hold Valoris closer. "Can one who mind blinds also use such powers to seek?"
"Who knows? But I do not think so, or we would long since have been caught. No, on the slopes of LodenKail one feels uneasy, but—" He shrugged. "I cannot tell you—it must be felt. This much I do know: we must not remain here. This land may be alive with wolfheads, perhaps searchers also." He was looking at Valoris and she saw him catch his lower lip between his teeth, as she had seen him do before when faced with a problem.
"We shall move by night/' he continued a moment later. 'There is a hunting lodge in the border hills within a short distance of LodenKail. If the wolfheads or that Sanghail scum have not plundered it, we can equip ourselves much better there."
"How far?"
"Perhaps two nights, maybe more, if we can keep to the trail, but we shall have to travel slowly with him."
Sarita could understand that burdened with Valoris she certainly could not move swiftly. On the other hand, Rhys could not carry the child and act as scout and guard one-armed as he was.
She tried to encourage Valoris to nap while she made up a bundle of foodstuff they could use on the march. When the child was well asleep, she stretched out beside him and also tried to rest. If she knew Rhys as well as she thought she did, he would keep going as long as possible once they had started.
When she awoke later in the afternoon, Rhys drifted noiselessly into sight.
"Nothing?" she asked.
"Nothing."
"Then you must rest." She tried to put authority into her voice. "You cannot guard all day and tramp all night. And you must let me see your wound."