by Tom Deitz
“Would this fool have a name, then? Or would you rather I just called you that?”
“Of course I do!” the woman flared. “But I certainly will not give it to you! Now tell me what you want and let me be about my business. Nothing good ever comes of your kind trafficking with mine—as you well know!”
“No,” a third voice broke in from behind them, “it doesn’t.”
David twisted around—and with a mix of relief and dire concern saw that it was Liz, dressed in full woodsman’s kit, easing out from behind the blasted oak.
“You heard that, did you?” he asked, with his best helpless grin.
“Sure did.”
“How much?”
“Started with ‘he did not look happy.’”
“So you know?”
Liz nodded. “I take it this is the lady you saw at the ’Watt?”
“One of ’em. The one that freaked Alec.” David turned back to the Faery. “You still haven’t told me why that other woman left when she saw you.”
“And you have not told me why you have come here.”
David puffed his cheeks. “I’m probably takin’ a chance with this,” he sighed. “But…I’m lookin’ for two of my buddies.”
The woman’s lips grew thin. “And you think they are upon the Trod?”
“If that’s what you call it. At least one of ’em is, I’m almost sure.”
“Tell me, then!”
David did, as sketchily as he could, beginning with Aikin, who was their more immediate concern.
The Faery scowled darkly when he paused for breath—but, he was relieved to see, not at him.
“So are the World Walls leakin’?” he asked abruptly.
“They might be,” the woman hissed. “It is not for me to say.”
David was on the verge of a scathing retort, when the Faery rose. “I will make a bargain with you,” she announced. “Since it is because of a creature of Faerie that your friend has passed this way, it is for Faerie to find him. But I will do that thing only if you will promise to ask no more questions about my activities here.”
“Not even your name?”
“Especially not that!”
“Nor what you’re doin’ in mortal substance, hauntin’ rock and roll clubs, and pretendin’ to drive Ford Tauruses?”
“Not them either.”
“You said ‘friend,’” Liz broke in. “What about Alec?”
“You have not told me about Alec.”
“You haven’t given me a chance,” David shot back—and laid out that tale as well.
“How do you know he is on the Tracks?” the woman inquired when he had finished.
“He…didn’t actually say he was on the Tracks,” David admitted, gaze fixed hard on the Faery. “He said he’d ‘gone Tracking.’”
“And,” Liz put in, “he went wherever he did from Athens—and how many Tracks can there be near here?”
“Many,” the Faery retorted. “But only one that our kind could access from your World.”
David took a deep breath. “How ’bout if he went straight through the World Walls?”
“Mortals cannot pass through the World Walls!”
“Not by our own power,” David countered. “We can…. That is, Alec can. He has something…magical that lets him.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “And what might this something be?”
David shook his head. “I don’t think I oughta tell you. And if you know as much as you hint, you know anyway. But if you’ll help us find him—and Aikin, of course; you probably need to find him first—if we do find him, I’ll ask him to show you.”
“You are a very great deal of trouble, human,” the woman snorted.
“I’m also very curious,” David snapped. “And I promised not to ask you any questions—and believe me, I’ve got a boodle, like, why you were in our World when the borders are supposed to be closed. Or—”
“Enough!” the woman growled. “I have said I will seek your friend. If I must, I will search for this other as well—when I have concluded the first.”
“He’s been gone longer,” Liz added helpfully.
“But time runs oddly on the Tracks around here,” the woman gave back. “Yet if what you related is true, he cannot have gone far. I should be able to determine that very quickly.”
“We’re going with you, of course,” Liz said into the ensuing pause. She stepped smartly forward and wrapped an arm around David. He patted the hand that curved around his waist—and nodded agreement.
The Faery glared at him. “I would prefer that you did not, but it seems pointless to argue. Very well, come—or stay.”
And with that, she caught the horse’s reins with one hand, and strode toward the Track.
David was there in a flash, grabbing her arm as she made to step upon it. “I’m not that big a fool,” he snorted. “You could be on that thing and gone!”
“I do not break my word,” the woman spat icily. And stomped down on that strip of barren ground.
The Track flared to brilliant, shimmering life. David gasped. It had been a long time since he’d seen a Track activated, a very long time indeed. His wonderlust flamed strong within him, like a leaf catching fire from a coal. Taking a deep breath, he followed the Faery—still gripping her arm—and, with Liz bringing up the rear, came full upon the Track. Its light promptly lapped up around him, and with it came that subtle flow of invigorating energy he’d almost forgotten. He breathed a happy sigh.
And released the woman’s arm. “Sorry,” he told her, with a lopsided grin. “I just kinda felt like I had to.”
The Faery raised an eyebrow, then turned and surveyed the Track, where it arrowed toward the west. Immediately, she stiffened, then squatted down and extended her hands over the glowing, shifting surface. Almost David thought he saw images form there, but it made his eyes burn even worse and he had no choice but to look away.
For a long moment the woman remained motionless, then rose. Her face was grim. “Your friend indeed came here,” she said. “I have sensed both his presence and that of a female enfield. But he is beyond help,” she continued, her voice falling to a whisper. “For the Wild Hunt has also passed this way, and more recently—and if the Hunt is on his trail, he is doomed. Even I dare go no farther.”
David could only stare dully at the ground and shake his head. “No,” he said at last, grateful for the comfort of Liz’s hand in his own. “You can stay here if you want, but I got him into this, I’ve gotta get him out.”
Chapter XIII: Over the Hills and Far Away
(The Straight Tracks—no time—night)
He had seen them now—and wished, most fervently, that he had not.
Caught in the open when the first mounted figure crested the ridge behind him, with the ruined spike of tower that was his goal still nearly half a mile distant, Aikin had found no choice but to fling himself flat where he stood and try to hide—in a particularly dense patch of gorse on the tower side of the car-wide stream he’d leapt scant seconds before. The foliage had obligingly frothed over him, providing a prickly screen—at least from visual surveillance by ordinary hunters. Fortunately, he was clad, in part, in camouflage. And fortunately, too, the fact that he’d crossed a body of water would give most things tracking him by scent pause—if that scent was not already obscured by the layer of mud, moss, and heather sheddings that begrimed the front of his body. Now if he could just keep quiet and still, he might have a chance—only that could be a problem, given how cold and wet the ground he sprawled upon was. In spite of himself, he shivered. But he shivered worse when he peered through the scanty twigwork at the dozen-odd figures silhouetted against the writhing sky.
Black was the ruling image: black man-shapes astride black horses atop a ridge of black-shadowed earth. Black spears stabbed the heavens there, and black banners snapped and worried around the nervous wind. One figure was taller than the others—or closer, or both—and that one alone wore a helm—Aikin hoped it wa
s a helm—crowned with the rack of an impressive stag.
Abruptly, the eastern clouds ripped asunder and gave the moon free rein to play—and play it did, across those figures a quarter mile away. Yet even at that range Aikin caught the gleam of metal on armor and shields and weaponry—and once, he was certain, on what should have been eyes.
The moon showed other eyes, too: living ones, smaller, more closely set, and eddying about the horses’ legs like paired embers of hellish red in a blot of knee-high smoke. Hounds, he knew. A hunting pack. But neither Host nor hounds poured down the slope to pursue him, though the pack was nosing the very spot where he’d lingered.
Aikin wanted very badly to bolt, but managed to hold his peace, to watch and wait, with his chin resting on one hand, while, beneath a foot-high bank before him, a pool of calm water shone like a blued-steel mirror, choked off by debris from the swifter flood.
So what were those guys gonna do?
“Shit!” he hissed into his hand. Something had moved not a yard beyond his nose. For an instant he thought it was the dratted enfield returning at the worst possible time, but then he realized that it was something in the water itself—a reflection, perhaps. Only it didn’t exactly look like one, and as he continued to stare at that dark water, the movements upon it—or within it, it was hard to tell which—stabilized into images: all too familiar ones.
It was the Hunt—no longer atop the ridge. But how had they come so close so fast, to be reflected here? Except, wait— He raised his head just enough to scan the horizon. Yep, there they were, right where he’d left them, still not giving chase. And then one of those shapes shaded its eyes, and he saw that gesture continued in the water, and knew. There was something magic about this silent pool: he had wondered what the Hunt was about, and the water had shown him—still was, when he stared at it again.
And this time he saw the horned Huntsman as from no more than a few yards’ distance: a tall dark shape beneath a voluminous cloak that might have been fabric or fur or feathers, and which billowed about him in frantic tatters as though he had ripped clouds from that thunderous sky and made of them a garment that had no other goal but to flee back to the heavens once more. He could see that one’s head better, too, but still wasn’t sure if the rack was grown from the Huntsman’s flesh, or part of his regalia; for those antlers issued from elaborate bosses set on either side of an intricate silver cap helm, the long ear- and nose-pieces of which obscured the man’s face, save for his sweeping black mustache—and his eyes.
—His eyes: a deep-set glitter in the darkness beneath the embossed browridges, that scanned slowly back and forth as he surveyed the valley in which Aikin sheltered. Slowly…slowly—and then, abruptly, he jerked his whole head around. Aikin flinched reflexively and tensed all over again, but then the Huntsman raised a complexly shaped and figured horn to his lips and blew a note like lightning striking a winded trumpet, and with a grunt from his mount (a black horse in black bardings) and a rustle of armor and jingle of mail, he and his Host swept back across the ridge.
—Out of sight to Aikin’s mortal eyes, but not to the pond. It was like watching a video there, complete with Dolby sound, only a zillion times scarier. He wondered, suddenly, if the Hunt knew it was being observed by possible quarry—or cared. For maybe a minute that company rode across the moors, until one of the hounds belled loudly, and the Hunt veered in a direction Aikin thought might be toward the place he’d entered this World, and all at once he caught movement in the bushes directly in its path.
For the second time since he had hidden, he mistook that frantically leaping form for the enfield, for it was roughly the beast’s size and color. But when it burst out on a stretch of open ground, Aikin discovered it was a person.
Sort of a person, he amended, for the figure was less than waist-high. By its size and wizened features, its bare feet, and the patched and ragged clothes (rusty breeches and a sleeveless patchwork tunic belted with golden links), he surmised it was one of the band of small folk he’d encountered what was probably less than a quarter hour ago. He wondered too if the figure might not have come in search of him—to confound his torment with further slings and arrows, or help him return whence he’d come.
But the Hunt was on that small form now; dogs—black dogs with flame-red eyes—coursing ahead of the pounding hooves like some black and evil tide. Aikin held his breath as the lead hound, which alone of that company wore a collar and alone had crimson ears, drew ahead of the pack and closed in for the kill. He could practically hear its jaws snapping, the thudding of its feet, the eager whoosh of its breath.
And then the little man uttered an indignant cry, and spun around to face it. The dog skidded to a halt, and they met eye to eye—at the man’s level (like him meeting a horse, Aikin concluded inanely)—and for a moment the Faery looked as though he was about to lash out with his fists. Instead, he simply stood glaring: weak, helpless, and defeated, a refugee who had not reached whatever haven had been his dream.
With his thumb and little finger, the man sketched a sign across his torso, and closed his eyes. The dogs, which had gathered around panting, moved. In an instant they had knocked him to the ground and pinned him to it with huge hairy paws. A few nudged him with sharp-toothed muzzles, and one ripped his tunic open with a swipe of claws, exposing a chest matted with ruddy hair. A vast dark shadow fell upon him, and Aikin’s point of view shifted to that of someone gazing down on the trembling half man from horseback height. A spear descended from the horned figure to his left, its point probing toward the helpless Faery.
Closer and closer, and Aikin couldn’t watch, yet had to; thus his eyes were wide open when that glittering icy point tapped the center of the Faery’s exposed chest. A dull thump, and blood sprang forth, at that lightest of touches; yet the Huntsman did not drive that weapon home, but simply left it in place, while blood pooled around it: a scarlet lake in the valley of the little man’s sternum. The Faery tried to push it away, of course, with both hands around the shaft, but the strength seemed to have left his limbs, and Aikin could only stare wide-eyed as, empowered by its own weight and a sharpness that transcended sharp, that point pierced muscle and bone and found the wee one’s heart.
The Faery cried out once, a word that almost had to mean “No!” and with that his eyes popped open, only to go dull and unfocused. A swirl of white vapor rose from a wound that was far too small to have cost a life, and drifted toward the sky. The Huntsman had apparently been awaiting that, too, and withdrew the spear from the flaccid body—to stab it through that cloud of mist and nothing, and suck it in.
“Another soul for my hungry cauldron,” he told the rider beside him. And the Huntsman set spurs to sides and once again was moving.
Aikin’s gorge rose at what he’d witnessed. Those guys had murdered somebody, dammit: someone small and helpless and afraid. And he tasted bile all over again when he realized that the Hunt had turned back his way. As best he could tell, it had covered at least half a mile in pursuit of the little man—which put it close to three-quarters of one from him. The tower was less than that up the next slope. If he could reach it ahead of them, maybe he could hide—locate a defensible position—anything to buy time.
Reluctantly, he tore his gaze away from the black pool, glanced at the rise beyond it, saw its summit still clear—and thrust himself to his feet to run as hard as he could in the opposite direction.
It was the longest run of his life, that headlong rush up the open slope—or so he thought. The air that had earlier tasted so thick and sweet seemed now insufficiently dense to sustain life, and ripped into his lungs like new-forged flames, leaving pain in lieu of sustenance. And the scrubby vegetation, that seconds before had seemed entirely too short, when he cowered beneath it, abruptly seemed too tall, and impeded his every step, so that to run through it was like running through mud (or one of those nightmares in which you can never run fast enough, but the nameless it can make all speed), and every leaf and twig tore at him an
d slowed him, so that he had to lift his knees strenuously high or else be utterly entangled. His heart was laboring, too, thudding along like the beat of the music back at the ’Watt. And a trio of fine clear pains had awakened in both overstressed thighs and one side.
But the cover was lower now, and more rocks showed as he approached the height. Yet just as he began to slow, his shaky peace was shattered by another winding of the horn. In spite of himself, he spun around, and saw that which made his blood run cold: black figures on black horses pursuing black dogs down a slope only slightly less stygian. It was true then, what he’d feared: The little man had been merely a diversion—an appetizer before the main course—which was clearly him.
Well, he’d give ’em a fight, he would. And he’d meet ’em on his own ground: Lord of this tower, if only for five minutes. (He had no doubt it was deserted, for he wasn’t fifty yards away now and no one had hailed him through empty windows or gaping doors, or from what he could see through a rent in the side, was probably a missing roof.) No sirree, he wouldn’t die as a helpless serf, a cowering mini man.
And with that, he redoubled his efforts.
Forty yards, and his legs were going numb with fatigue.
…Thirty and he could barely move them (and wondered where all the strength and stamina that were his vanity in the Lands of Men had gone).
…Twenty, and the blackness of the tower revealed a darker blackness that was surely a doorway.
…Ten, and his other side caught fire from the first, giving him twin stitches. He gasped, but stumbled onward, was vaguely aware of an archway looming before him, then over him, then as a blackness behind, as he tumbled to his knees on moss-covered cobblestones.
Breathless, giddy, he stayed there, panting, sweating, trying to still his heart, while striving even harder to contrive some means of staving off the Hunt. Maybe he could reason with him—it—them—whatever. But the lives of sentients obviously did not concern them, and Dave had likewise hinted that most denizens of Faerie tended to regard humans as little more than gifted vermin.