by Karen Myers
Moments later they heard a rider descending the path, bits of the tack rubbing, and hooves thudding slowly as the horse found footing. It snorted as it smelled their own mounts.
The rider was impatient and in a temper. He paid no attention to his horse’s alert. His head was down, ducking out of the rain, but he raised it level as he passed by their blind, and George widened his nostrils, damping his flare of excitement as best he could and trying to keep his glamour under some kind of control. It was Scilti, wearing his false form. George still couldn’t tell what was behind it.
The horse and rider continued down the path and out of sight. George thought, I could probably have suppressed his horse’s reaction to our presence. I’ll have to try that, next time.
George waited until he was sure they were beyond hearing, then dropped the glamour. Benitoe looked at him cautiously.
“I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Me, neither. I’ve just started experimenting with Ceridwen.” He thrust away the thought of how that experiment ended.
Benitoe looked down at Scilti’s horse prints. “That’s the one who came up here earlier. You know who he is, don’t you?”
“He’s a stranger at the Horned Man, calling himself Scilti. He wears a glamour.” He looked directly at Benitoe. “Gwyn knows about it. This mustn’t be talked about with anyone else, since we’re not sure who his friends are.”
Benitoe nodded.
“I want to know what he was doing here,” George said.
“Let’s get the hound,” Benitoe said, “and I’ll let you know if our path diverges from his as we go.”
They continued climbing on the path until, at one fork, George was pulled left by the hound sense, while Scilti’s path went right.
“Hound first,” George said, “then we’re coming back to this spot.”
They found Aeronwy not far away. She had come back to this side of the ridge and had no apparent injuries, but she was exhausted, as if she had run back as fast as possible and couldn’t take another step. With some maneuvering they managed to get her lifted to George’s arms so he could carry her draped partially over his lap across the saddle.
When they came back to the fork, they took the other branch and continued to follow Scilti’s trail. It came out onto a rock outcrop forming a ledge in front of an overhang, almost a cave, nestled near the top of the ridge, framed in front with trees reaching up from below that masked it from sight. One gap in the trees allowed a spectacular view down the slope, showing the village to the right, and the manor to the left, fully visible.
“Well this is a convenient spy hole, isn’t it?” George said. He stayed on Afanc to hold the hound, but Benitoe dismounted to look inside. He didn’t walk in, afraid to leave muddy footprints where the rain wouldn’t wash them away, but it was quite shallow, providing shelter from the weather and not much else.
“Nothing inside that I can see,” he said.
Continuing along the ledge, he found another path out. “There are different prints here, a man on foot.”
“So, two of them meet here, then go their separate ways. Do you know where that path goes?”
“Could go anywhere. If you stayed at this level on the ridge side, you’d intersect the route from Daear Llosg, not far from the top. I’ve never heard of this overhang, but I haven’t explored all over the slope. It may be well known.”
“I want to follow the other fellow, but we need to get this hound back.”
Benitoe said, “We’re probably closer taking this path than going back down the way we came. We can come in at the postern gate.”
“Agreed.” Benitoe remounted and took the lead to make tracking easier. The path led gradually downslope, directly toward the manor. After several minutes, George called out quietly, “Hold up.” This was the general area of the small hidden way he had found earlier, and he cast about again looking for it. He located it, not far in front of them.
“Alright, continue.” The path they were on took them straight to it. They passed through the slight widening of the path without effect and continued on. “We’re not far from the back gate,” he told Benitoe. Benitoe gave him a glance, as if to wonder how he knew that.
At the next fork, George recognized the left branch as leading around to Daear Llosg, having come that way a few days ago. They stayed to the right, headed for the manor, and at the next branching, the footprints they were tracking turned right, gradually going down toward the palisade. The riders followed the straight branch down the slope instead and came out at the clear space before the palisade, facing the rear sortie gate of the manor. The other path would have emerged to their right.
The guards were on the alert, having heard them on the path.
“We have a hound we need to bring in,” George told them. “Has anyone else been here before us, this morning?”
They shook their heads and opened the gates for him, looking skeptically at their horses, made nervous by the palisade and reluctant to enter the tunnel despite its stone shielding. George reached for the horses and his hound to calm them, and they quieted, walking through the tunnel and out the other gate.
“Benitoe,” he said, quietly, “we’re going to ride casually to the kennels, following the perimeter close to the palisade. I want you on the outside. As we approach the balineum, take special notice of the ground and see if you can find those tracks again. Don’t let anyone notice what you’re looking for. There’s a secret way through the palisade beyond the baths that we’re not supposed to know about, and we don’t want to alert our enemy.”
Benitoe nodded seriously and began surveying the wet ground, with George on his larger horse blocking him from the view of the rest of the manor yard.
Past the balineum complex, Benitoe paused to fiddle with his tack. He muttered, out of the side of his mouth, “The prints are visible here, coming from the palisade. It’s a well-hidden spot.”
“Alright, let’s follow them as if just taking this route to the kennels by chance. I don’t imagine you’ll be able to track them far, though, with all the usual activity in the yard.”
They turned left and made another twenty yards before Benitoe muttered, “Lost him.”
“To be expected. Will you know him again, if you see the prints?”
“Yes. Medium weight, male, right shoe nicked on the inner heel.”
“Excellent. Keep an eye out for him. We think he lives inside the gates.” He looked at Benitoe directly. “Be careful, these are dangerous people.”
“Good,” he said. “So am I.”
What’s the point of climbing up the ridge in all this rain just to be told to wait? I can get him any time, I can. He doesn’t know me, none of them do. They just go around with their little jobs while I sit and watch.
Makes me hungry, all this creeping and waiting. Like the little animals in the woods. You have to sit still, still, and not let them see you move. Until you’re close enough to grab them, till they’re in your hands, hearts pounding, throbbing under your fingers, eyes shining. Then they’re yours, and you can stop them whenever you want.
“What’s wrong with her?” George asked Ives. “Cythraul and Rhymi seem none the worse for wear, but she’s a wreck.”
They looked down at Aeronwy, lying on a bed of straw in the infirmary pen, away from the other hounds. She had taken water and some broth after they cleaned her up but wouldn’t eat anything else.
“I think she’s just exhausted and worn out from fright. If she crossed the ridge, there’s no telling what she found.”
“She feels cold and lonely to me,” George told him. “I wonder if she has a couple of kennel buddies we could let in to keep her company and warm her up?”
“You stay here. I’ve an idea, I’ll be right back.”
George sat down stiffly along the wall next to the tired hound and lifted her head onto his lap, running his large hand down her side and rubbing her neck. Her tail beat feebly on the ground at the attention.
; Ives returned with two bitches. “This one’s her littermate, and the other’s their dam. They all get along fine.”
Both hounds walked over to Aeronwy and sniffed her all over. The older one lay down next to her with a sigh and was soon joined by the younger one, eager to burrow into the only corner of the pen that was covered in straw.
“That’ll work,” George said. He stood up carefully, feeling every ache and the chill of a cold wet morning.
George walked across the lane to his gate and up the path to the porch. He couldn’t walk in, dripping and filthy like this.
He knocked on the door, and Alun opened it, took one look, and held up his hand with a “stay put” gesture. He returned in a moment with an organized kit. “Sit there,” he pointed. The hat and gloves were first, then the boots came off, reluctantly, the leather wanting to stick to the wet socks. Then he peeled the socks off, giving George dry wool socks to put on instead, and slippers.
He stood up, emptied all of his pockets into a basket Alun provided, then with Alun’s help took off the wet wool coat he’d been wearing, shivering in the sudden chill in his shirt sleeves, since the coat had been keeping him warm, even soaked. Alun reached for the weskit, too, draping it with the coat on the back of the porch chairs. He sent George ahead of him into the house, walking carefully to avoid any puddles in his slippers, and bade him stand on a towel in the hall, next to the door. He stripped off the rest of his clothes, dried off, and put on clean warm undergarments. Before putting on his dressing gown, he walked into the kitchen to wash the dirt and hound grime off his hands and face and towel them dry.
Alun returned with a hot mug of tea and he sat down in front of the kitchen fire, beginning to recover as he warmed up inside and out and listened to the rain fall. Poor Alun, he thought, all those nice new clothes.
CHAPTER 27
The rain falling lightly but steadily after lunch inclined George toward study. He’d been quite surprised at his partial success with the camouflage glamour earlier in the woods, and wanted to explore the subject and see what else was possible.
At lunch he kept an eye out for people coming in with wet feet on the stone flags, to see if he could spot the prints Benitoe described, but without success. Of course, if the unknown were already inside, he could come to the meal dry shod or even in different footwear, and George would never know. Frustrating, he thought.
He hadn’t yet seen Ceridwen or Gwyn to report to and decided to see if Ceridwen had set up the shelf of books for him yet. That way he could learn something, and if she was there maybe give them more information to chew over.
At home, he put together a little bundle of his slippers, a couple of apples, and the new notebook Ceridwen had given him, and dashed across the lane, trying to stay dry. A knock at her door produced a servant who let him into the library and went to fetch tea while he looked over the shelf she gave him, now populated with several books.
The first two at the left were general reading. The leftmost one was titled First Principles and looked like a basic work for students. He pulled that one out and skimmed the rest. There were two books in the next section on the subject of glamours, three following, about ways, and two on talking to beasts. Excellent, he thought. This should hold me for a few days, assuming I can read them. Both the books in the first section were printed, but at least three of the others seemed to be manuscript.
He had shed his wet shoes at the door and walked about in his slippers, comfortable and dry. The servant brought in the tea and placed it next to an armchair near the fire, which he freshened up with a couple of logs before leaving.
George added his apples to the tray and sat down, keeping an eye on the doorway. Ceridwen wasn’t at home at the moment, but expected soon.
As she had bidden him, he opened his notebook and started a section on his first assignment. According to the front matter, the book in his hand was printed in 1838, and claimed to be the 23rd edition of a work first produced in Cor Tewdws, wherever that was. No author was mentioned. He was relieved to find it legible, in a language he could follow. He began reading.
A crack as an ember broke off a log in the fire finally caught his attention and he looked up to find Ceridwen in the doorway, watching. The tea was cold, and his finger marked his place more than halfway through the thin volume.
He rose to greet her. “Thanks for putting these books together so quickly for me. This is fascinating.” He held out the first book and waved it, finger still inside.
“It’s good to have an eager student.” She walked over and perched on the arm of the leather chair across from him. “Were you looking for me earlier?”
George found a scrap of paper from the kindling basket to hold the place in his book more permanently and put it aside as he sat down again. He recounted the discovery of Scilti in the woods, and their tracking of whomever he met back to the manor. Ceridwen listened attentively.
“Come here and show me where you were.”
She pulled out one of the scrolls behind her desk and rolled out the same map George had seen before when he showed her the ways. He bent down and used his finger to sketch out the various paths. “We came right through the spot with the small way. Can you tell that? Are your traps in place?”
“I felt passage up the slope this morning, and back twice. There was no indication that the way itself had been used, no delays or interruption in movement. The first two were a man on foot, the last was two on horses.”
“Sounds right to me,” he said.
“It’s the first time the traps have been activated since I set them, by anything other than animals alone.”
George straightened up and stretched. “That overhang may be a common meeting space. It probably takes less than half an hour to reach it from here on foot, so almost anyone could vanish for an hour and not be noticed. No one keeps track of Scilti and the woods are broad. He could enter that network of trails from anywhere and make his way over to the ledge.”
“How would he get a message to his partner to meet him?”
“I should think that depends on who his partner is. There may not be any regular need for messages anyway. There might be a standard time for Scilti to meet with this spy within the walls, and they’re just sticking to a schedule.”
“If that’s true,” Ceridwen said, “then we might learn something just from that. Who isn’t otherwise available from one point to another of a Saturday morning?”
She sat down at her desk and drew out a piece of paper. “All the instructors like Hadyn and the craft-masters, and their students, would be tied down. The manor house staff would many of them be preparing the lunch meal and starting on dinner, or doing other household duties. In any case, they’d be well supervised. Same for the stablemen and, for that matter, the guards.”
“That leaves kennel-staff, which I can look into, outdoor workers, people who work in the out-buildings…”
“All the primary residents, the guests, and their staff,” she said.
They looked at each other. George said, slowly, “I can’t see one of the highly visible residents or guests taking this hike unnoticed and coming back filthy and wet, but what about their staff? What do they do every day?”
“Whatever their lords ask for. Other than helping serve at meals, they have no other fixed duties.”
“So, let’s add them to the list. There can’t be that many,” he said.
George considered. “You know, Maonirn at the inn said Scilti was out every day. Where does he go? Does he just come to this one spot and hope that his partner can meet him, or does he have other spies to talk to?”
“We need to know,” Ceridwen said, “You can’t follow a rider on foot, and a horse would be too visible. We must intercept him instead.”
“What about more traps? We could set something up at the overhang and at potential entry points in the west woods”
“The problem isn’t making them,” she said. “It’s monitoring them. There’s a limit to how many I c
an pay attention to. They also can’t tell us identity very well. I won’t know for sure it’s Scilti who triggers them, or whom he meets.”
“But we can learn a lot about what’s going on just from that little bit of information, by comparing the times.”
“True.” George saw her mentally weighing her choices.
“I know the overhang you found and how to get to it. I’ll set traps at the paths there, and also at the entrance of the trail across from the palisade hole. Just before dinner tonight would be best, when most people are here and Scilti is known to be at the inn.”
“But it’ll be filthy wet and getting dark,” George said. “Let me go with you, at least.”
“If you like, but it won’t be the first time.” She waved her arm at the cozy library with its warm fire and gleaming shelves. “I’m not always the well-groomed scholar in her tidy den.”
She placed her hands on her thighs and stood up. “Come tell me about the glamour you cast when Scilti went by. I want to hear all the details.”
“Are you sure this will work?” Alun said.
He stood under the dripping roof before Ceridwen’s door while George knocked.
“It’ll be fine,” George said. He hoped he was right.
The door was opened by Ceridwen’s servant and they entered the hall trying not to make a mess. It was only a short distance across the lane, so they were still relatively dry, barring their footwear which they wiped.
Ceridwen, dressed in boots, breeches, and coat, met them in the study. “You’ve been here before, Alun, haven’t you?”
“Yes, my lady, but not for some time.”
George saw him looking ill at ease. He pointed him to a chair by the fire. “Sit down. You’re going to be here for a while. Might as well be comfortable.”
Alun reluctantly sat down, and George and Ceridwen joined him.
“Tell Ceridwen what you told me, about Meuric,” George said.
“You asked me two days ago to see if I could find out more about him. I talked to some of my friends in the manor and heard some strange things.”