Gazing in disbelief at the dense woodland, I slowly became aware of a strange, unsettling sound. I think the sound had been there from the first, but I noticed it only after the first shock of seeing the trees had passed. Nor was I the only one to hear it.
'What is that?' asked Arthur, his voice low. He half turned his head, but his eyes did not leave the dark wood for a moment. 'It sounds like teeth clicking.'
Truly, it did; it was the sound of many teeth, large and small, gnashing against one another – not fiercely, but softly, almost gently, in a low, gabbled muttering.
Arthur's eyes swept left and right along the stout line of trees for any break in the wood. The line met us as a timber wall, and there was no breach to be seen anywhere along its thick-grown length save one only: directly ahead, a gap opened between the close-grown trees.
The trail we pursued led straight into the heart of that dark wood. What is more, the mist was rising again; it was already filling the valley between us and the wood's edge.
Bedwyr and Cador reined up beside us then. Having observed the forest from their rearward places, they now joined us to learn what the king and his Wise Counsellor made of it. 'Unless it was hidden by mist,' Bedwyr declared, 'I cannot think how it has come to be here otherwise.'
'Perhaps,' Cador suggested, 'like the warriors in your story, Myrddin, we have slept a thousand years, and the wood has grown up around us.'
Bedwyr frowned at Cador's frivolity, and reproached him with an indignant grunt. But Myrddin said, 'In this place, that is as sound an explanation as any other.'
'If that is what passes for reason,' Bedwyr said darkly, 'then folly is king, and madness reigns.'
'A wall before us, a wall behind. There is but one way through,' Arthur said, 'and there is no turning back.'
So saying, he raised his hand and signalled the column to move on. I returned to my place behind Myrddin. 'Well,' I said to Rhys as we urged our horses forward once more, 'we are going in.'
'Was there ever any question?'
'No,' I answered. 'Aliajacta est.'
'What does that mean?' he asked.
The die is cast,' I told him. 'It is something old Caesar once said.'
'Who told you that?'
'My father used to say it – I never knew why. But lately, I begin to think I know what he meant.'
We crossed the valley and entered the wood in silence. No one spoke, and all kept a keen eye for any sign of attack, though many, I noticed, cast a last glance at the sky before the intertwining branches closed overhead. It was like entering a tomb – so close and dark and silent was the unchancy wood. The trail narrowed as it passed among the broad boles of the trees, but rather than ride single file, the men urged their horses together and rode shoulder to shoulder and flank to flank.
Like all the others, I cast a longing glance behind me as we entered the wood and saw the same look of sick apprehension on one face after another. But there was nothing for it. We clutched our weapons more tightly and hunched lower in the saddle as if to escape notice of the tight-crowded trees.
Keeping my eyes on Myrddin and Arthur ahead of me, I remained alert to the sounds around me, but there was little to hear; a thick mat of pine needles cushioned the horses' hooves, and the men made no sound at all. Neither was any birdsong heard – nothing, in fact, but the incessant clicking, and the hush of muffled breath passing into the dank, dark air.
As to the ceaseless clicking and clicking and clicking, after a time I discovered what created that unsettling sound: the wind twitching the bare upper branches. Fitful and gusty, the wind did not penetrate the forest at all, but continually mumbled and fretted overhead, stirring uneasily in the high treetops and making the thin branches quiver. So close were these limbs and so entangled, they chattered against one another in endless motion. Even this, however, did not strike the ear with any vigour, but reached us as a faint muttering falling from high above, sinking down and down into the soft forest floor below.
The forest swallowed everything that came into it – sunlight and wind, and now the Pendragon and his warband. Everyone who conies into a woodland wild feels something of this oppressive enclosing; it is what causes a traveller to skirt the shadows and stay to the trail, proceeding with wary caution. What is more, this uncanny sensation seemed to increase with every step deeper into the wood until it took on an almost suffocating aspect, becoming a thing of towering proximity and ponderous weight.
We came upon a stream – little more than a muddy rivulet dividing the trail – and stopped to water the horses, taking it in turn by twos, and then moving on to allow those behind to get at the water. We rode a fair way farther, whereupon Arthur halted the columns, turned his horse, and sat looking down the long double line of warriors. Without a word, Myrddin rode down the centre, passing between the warriors.
'What do you see, lord?' I asked, turning in the saddle to learn what held his attention.
'It is what I am not seeing that causes me concern,' the king replied, still gazing back along the trail.
The trees along each side and the branches thickly interwoven above made of our trail a shadowy tunnel, like the entry shaft of a cave or mine. The Cymbrogi, riding close to one another, sat their horses, awaiting the call to move on. Owing to the dimness of the light and the narrowness of the trail, I could not see past more than twelve or fifteen riders as I looked down the line. Yet I could discern nothing amiss.
I was about to say as much when Myrddin shouted something and came pounding back along the trail to join us.
'Well?' said the king.
'I cannot see them,' Myrddin replied. 'They should have rejoined us by now.'
Only then did I realize what they were talking about. The fifteen or so pairs that I saw behind us were, indeed, all that remained of the long double column. The others were not lost to the shadows – they were gone completely. Obviously, we had become separated from the rest of the warhost. The warband led by Bedwyr and Cador had vanished.
'Lord, allow me to ride back and find out what has happened,' I volunteered. 'No doubt meet them before I have gone a hundred paces.'
'Very well,' Arthur agreed, 'but take Rhys with you – let him signal us when you have reached them. We will wait for you here.'
I returned to my horse and informed Rhys of the king's command as I swung into the saddle. We passed down the line of warriors and back along the trail. I counted thirteen pair: twenty-six warriors out of fifty, I thought, and wondered what had become of the rest. Could twenty-four mounted warriors simply disappear?
Once past the last of the Cymbrogi, we urged our mounts to speed and raced along the close-grown track. When, after a fair ride, we still caught no sight of the stragglers, I halted. 'We should have seen them by now,' Rhys said as he reined up beside me. 'What could have happened to them?'
'Until we find them, we only waste our breath asking such questions,' I pointed out. In Llyonesse, anything might happen, I thought, but kept the thought to myself.
'Well, what do you suggest, O Head of Wisdom?' Rhys gave me a sour frown.
'Either we keep riding until we find them, or we go back,' I suggested, and Rhys rolled his eyes to show how impressed he was with my reckoning. 'Which is it to be?'
Before he could answer, there arose on the path behind us the strangest sound I have ever heard. If you were to imagine the sound of a bull stag belling out his rage as a pack of baying hounds raced in for the kill – imagine that, and then increase it tenfold and add to it the roar of a stream in full spate, and you will have some small idea of the sound that broke upon us as a single blast, like that loosed from a horn.
A seething, restless silence reclaimed the trail. The horses shied and tried to bolt, but we held them tight. In a few moments, the sound came again, closer. The bare-limbed trees quivered, and I felt the dull tremble of the earth in the pit of my stomach. Whatever made that sound was coming our way, and swiftly.
TWENTY-NINE
The next sound I hea
rd was the sharp slap of leather against the withers of Rhys' mount as he wheeled the frightened animal and gave it leave to fly – nor was I slow to follow, pausing only long enough to cast a fleeting backward glance. I saw nothing but the shadow-crowded path and darkness beyond. Even so, the shudder of the trees told me that the thing was charging towards us with speed.
I gave my mount its head, and a heartbeat later, I was racing along the forest trail, trying to catch Rhys.
It took us longer to reach our waiting companions than I expected, and I feared we had somehow lost king and Cymbrogi along with all the rest. But then Rhys slowed and I saw, just beyond him, two horses in the track ahead. The Cymbrogi had dismounted to rest the horses while awaiting our return. They called out to us, asking what we had discovered, but we did not stop until we had rejoined Myrddin and Arthur.
Rhys slid from the saddle before his horse had come to a halt. Arthur and Myrddin had risen to their feet, the question already on their faces. 'We did not find them, lord,' Rhys was saying as I dismounted.
'Then what -' began the king.
Before he could say more, the creature behind us loosed its bone-rattling cry. The forest trembled around us and the horses began rearing and neighing. The waiting warriors leapt to their mounts, stretched for their dangling reins, and retrieved spears from beneath their saddles.
Arthur, sword in hand, ordered the battle line and, an instant later, we were armed and ready to face whatever came our way.
The trail was too narrow for horses to manoeuvre, so Arthur ordered the fight on foot. 'It will come at us on the trail,' the king cried, his voice taking on the vigour of command. 'Let it come! Open a way before it – make a path – two men on each side. Let it come in – then close on it from either side.'
It was a desperate tactic, borrowed from the hunt, most often used when a man finds himself unhorsed during the chase. Arthur established himself at the forefront of the line. Myrddin stood to his right, with Rhys and me to his left. The Cymbrogi led the horses to safety well up the trail, and then quickly filled in behind us in ranks four across.
We stared into the gloom, tree limbs quivering on either side and overhead. I could feel the trembling of the ground as the shudders passed up through the earth and into my feet and legs. A hundred horses pounding hard down the path could not drum the earth so. What could it be?
The unnerving cry thundered again. Closer. The entire forest seemed to ripple like a wave. The unnatural sound sent a cold flash of fear snaking through the ranks.
The drumming thud in the ground grew louder. The Cymbrogi stood gripping their spears in silence, staring hard into the gloom ahead.
The roar sounded again. Closer still: an unearthly howl that pierced to the heart. Cold, sick dread spread through me and the wood seemed to undulate; a black mist gathered before my eyes as the ground shook with the pounding of unseen hooves.
I tightened my grip on my spear and shook my head to clear it, thinking, The thing must be nearly on top of us now… but where is it?
And then I saw, looming out of the murk of shadows, the form of a beast: a great dark mass racing with impossible speed directly towards us. God help us, it was enormous!
Out of the shadows it came. I heard several stifled cries behind me, and others gasped and muttered hasty prayers.
Curiously, the creature had no substance, no solidity. Even as it swept swiftly nearer, I could get no clear notion of its appearance. The thing seemed nothing but shadow and motion. Indeed, I could see the dimly quivering shapes of trees and branches through it.
The ground heaved beneath our feet, and I smelled the rank scent of animal filth. But though we stood steadfast with our spears at the ready, there was nothing substantial to fight.
I received the distinct impression of a massive beast with the sharp spine and high-humped shoulder of a boar, its foul hair long and flowing in matted shreds like the tatters of a rotten cloak. I imagined two huge yellow eyes glaring balefully out from a flattened piglike face, beneath which bulged a massive jaw from which two great, curved brown tusks jutted in upward-sweeping arcs like a pair of barley scythes. Short, powerful, stumplike legs pummelled the earth, driving the creature forward on the cloven hooves of a stag.
This, as I say, was merely an impression, an image that burned itself into my mind. There was no actual creature, nothing corporeal at all – just a dark-gathered mist of churning shadow and motion.
Some of the warriors let slip their weapons, and one or two dropped to their knees.
'Courage!' shouted Arthur, his voice a steady rock amidst the rising flood of fear. 'Stand firm!'
The vile thing drove down on us with the speed of a falling mountain, shaking the ground with every flying step. I gripped my spear and hunkered down, ready to let fly should anything tangible present itself.
The beast came on. The monster loosed its earsplitting scream. The chill air shivered to the sound of a thousand slavering hounds and the belling of a hundred stags at bay.
The cry carried the shadowshape into our midst.
'Hold!' called Arthur. 'Hold, men… stand your ground.'
Beneath my feet, the ground rumbled hollow like a drum., 'Stand firm…' Arthur called, straining to be heard above the sound of the onrushing beast. 'Stand…'
My stomach tightened in anticipation of the terrible impact. The air shuddered and I had the explicit sensation of a great hairy flank heaving past me – like a rippling black wall of muscle.
Spear poised, I drew back my arm and prepared to strike.
The warrior opposite me let fly – too soon! The spear sailed over my head; I ducked under it and in the same instant heard a short, sharp cry as the creature whirled in mid-flight and struck.
I saw merely a sudden surge, a quickening of the darkness, and the monster thundered past.
I leapt to the stricken warrior's aid, and a stink like that of rotting meat struck me like the blow of a fist. The gorge rose in my throat and I gagged on the stench. I put a hand over my nose and mouth to keep from vomiting. The Cymbrogi round about groaned, coughed, and spat, and the wounded man writhed on the ground.
His side had been laid open from chest to hip, and blood gushed dark and hot from the wound. 'Help me!' he screamed. 'Help me!'
'Tallaght?' I said. In the dim light, his features twisted with pain, I did not recognize him at first. 'Lie still, brother. Help is coming.
'Myrddin!' I shouted. 'Over here! Hurry!'
Tallaght clutched my hand; his grip was slippery with blood, but he clung to me as if to life itself. 'I am sorry, lord,' he said, his voice already growing weaker. 'I did not mean to disgrace…'
'Shh,' I said gently. 'It does not matter. Just rest easy.'
'Tell Arthur I am sorry…' he whispered, and fell to coughing and could not catch his breath. He died, choking on his blood before Myrddin could reach him. 'Go with God, my friend,' I said, and lay his hand upon his chest.
Just as swiftly as it had come, the apparition vanished. The ground continued to drum and tremble for a time, but the creature was gone. Myrddin appeared at my side and bent over the fallen warrior. 'It is Tallaght,' I said as the Emrys stretched his hand towards the young man's face. 'He is dead.'
Some of the warriors nearby repeated this pronouncement, and it was passed along the ranks. A moment later, there came a cry from farther up the trail. 'Stop him!' one of the warriors shouted. 'Someone stop him!'
Glancing up, I saw a mounted warrior burst forth from among the horses. Rhys shouted for the man to stop at once, and several others tried to head off the hqrse, but the rider was too quick and the horse had already reached its stride. He gained the trail at a gallop, and disappeared into the shadows.
Arthur quickly ordered men to go after him, but Myrddin counselled against it. 'It is too late now,' he said. 'Let him go.'
'We can catch him still,' the king protested.
'We have just lost one warrior to the beast,' the Emrys informed Arthur. 'How many more will y
ou risk?'
Arthur frowned, but accepted his counsellor's advice. 'Did you see who it was?'
'No.' Myrddin shook his head slowly.
'I saw him,' I told them. 'It was Peredur. No doubt he has gone to avenge his kinsman's death.'
'The young fool,' Arthur muttered.
'He is God's concern now,' Myrddin said. 'Put him from your thoughts, and instead think how to find your missing warriors.'
Night was hard upon us, and rather than risk losing the rest of the warband in the dark, Arthur decided to make camp and wait until morning. We buried Tallaght's body where he had fallen, and Myrddin spoke a prayer over the grave. I would have liked to do more for the boy, but that is the way of it sometimes. The Pendragon ordered the remaining Cymbrogi to gather fuel for a fire. What with the dense wood all around us, the men had a great heap of dead timber piled up, and in less time than it takes to tell, the first snakes of flame were slithering up the tangle of old branches.
Once the horses were settled, we gathered to warm ourselves and, in crowding close, to console one another. The fellowship of loyal men is not to be slighted; it is a thing of great solace and is therefore sacred. Accordingly, the Pendragon, in ordering the fire, meant not only to warm us, but to help us to restore our confidence, which had been badly shaken. No one could have imagined that it would turn out as it did.
Comforted by the fire, the men began to talk, and some wondered aloud what manner of creature it was that they had driven off; others voiced surprise that they should have chased it away at all. Speculation proved futile and as one suggestion after another foundered, everyone turned to Myrddin, who was squatting on his haunches at the edge of the fire, arms crossed over knees, staring bleakly into the flames.
'Here, now, Myrddin,' called Arthur genially. 'Have you ever heard tell of such a beast?'
At first it seemed Myrddin had not heard the king's question.
He made no move, but continued staring into the red heart of the fire.
'What say you, bard?' the king said, his voice loud in the sudden quiet of the wood.
Grail pc-5 Page 28