Kal needed to say no word. Gwyn had turned heel, putting his back to Hoël's Dyke, bent on regaining the only conceivable place of safety available in these Woods: the hallowed ground of the Well. Kal took flight also, and the two Holdsmen pressed across the swamp at a jog. At his waist, the water skins sloshed and jostled as Kal ran, as did his codynnos, the bow and quiver, and Rhodangalas in its scabbard. Kal felt encumbered, awkward, and unable to put distance between himself and the unthinkable terror at his back. Still the horns winded, and still the wolfsong rose in reply. Kal chuckled to himself grimly. At least the Southwoldsmen would hear the same howls and, out of fear, would not dare to trespass the boundary of these mysterious Woods.
Trotting heavy-footed behind Gwyn, Kal approached the edge of the bog. Though it was still hours from nightfall, the Woods gave the curious impression of being already cast in the shadows of dusk. A purpling gloom seemed to pool beneath the trees that verged the broad marsh and into which the path ran rising again into the forest. Kal threw a glance over his shoulder, and there, on the raised trackway on the far side of the fetid bog, he thought he saw a form, man-sized and stooped, lift its head, then turn and lope away into the trees . . . .
Or perhaps it was just a will-o'-the-wisp, some errant trick of light and mist and marsh gas in the gathering shade. Kal shuddered uncontrollably. It was nothing, he told himself, shrugging off the prickling chill from his shoulders and arms. Nothing at all.
Kal picked up his pace until he drew abreast of Gwyn, who now shambled quickly up the long slope ascending the ridge.
"The howling's stopped."
Gwyn looked to Kal and nodded but did not slacken his pace.
"Do you think it was the . . ."
Again Gwyn nodded at Kal but made no sound. Kal found his companion's silent intensity unnerving. At the same time, he could think of nothing to say that might dispel their mounting trepidation, and so they plodded on up the hill, hearing only the steady drone of insects and the scuff of their footsteps on the flagstone.
Atop the rise, the sky broke blue through the curtain of trees in the gap where the path crested the ridge and fell into the valley beyond. There sunlight gilded the ancient flags of the track, bathing them in soft warmth, streaming down the path towards the two Holdsmen still steadily climbing the hill. As Kal looked up the path, a deer stepped onto the road at the very crown of the hill, its graceful form silhouetted by the westering sun, dark against the sky. It paused, a forefoot raised, and slowly turned its head to look down upon the two men. After a brief moment, the elegant creature broke its gaze and sauntered away from them down the path, the sun blazing white on its back and sides as it disappeared over the brow of the hill.
Kal choked a cry and spun his head around to look at Gwyn. Beside him the young Holdsman walked on, his eyes fixed on the trackway before his feet, unwitting and unaware. But Kal had seen her. Indeed, he had seen her. He felt relieved of the accusing doubt that the watery reflection in the pool may have been only tempered by his fancy. But now . . . No, it was her! It had been her then, as it was her now! And she would guide them to safety. Kal laughed and slapped his companion on the back. Gwyn shot him an expression of mild shock, then smiled nervously.
Topping the rise, Kal surveyed the valley. There stood the pillared structure above the Well, the path running to it up the knoll. There lay the stream, sparkling in the late afternoon sun, a myriad other runnels and rivulets chasing the steep hillsides to join it. There stood the coppiced woods of aspen and birch and the vast field of green, but nowhere was there sign of the white hind. Kal shrugged. His newfound peace remained undisturbed.
"We'll make for the standing stones," he said to Gwyn. "The hill gives us a clear view in all directions. It will be a clear night tonight, and with a good moon . . . for the better part of it, anyway."
In a matter of minutes, the Holdsmen had traversed the distance to the hill beneath which, on the side opposite them, was nestled Ruah's Well. They trudged up the rising ground. The sound of the horns had long since faded from hearing. Whether it was because of distance or because the Southwoldsmen had stopped winding them, Kal couldn't tell.
The two of them decided that they would forgo a fire that night. It would be warm enough, and a fire could only serve to attract unwanted attention. Kal thought it wise, however, to lay the makings of a fire in readiness by the mouth of the grotto, one that could be quickly kindled. In the event that something should besiege them in the night, they could easily flee down the stairs from their post, strike the tinder, and seek refuge in the cavern. Only two things did Kal know about waldscathes, the only things that Wilum had been able to tell him—they were to be feared by man, and they feared man's fire. Kal could only hope that, should this threat from the Woods prove to be more than simply fanciful legend, a ready fire, good shelter, and the protection of pios, songline, and Ruah would suffice as a defence.
After readying a large fire and stacking an ample supply of dry wood near the mouth of the cavern, the two supped on oatcakes and draughts of cool water taken from the Well. They were thankful enough for the oatcakes the wise woman had sent with them. If she had hoped that they might return to Mousehold that evening, then she had provisioned them with more than they needed for the day's journey. Doubtless, they would be even more grateful for her generosity come morning.
Twilight came quickly to the valley, despite its being clear and open. It was as if the valley was inescapably joined to the darkness of the Woods of Tircoil simply by virtue of its being nestled in the Black Cape. Kal and Gwyn stood on the terrace of the hill, looking out towards the setting sun. Even as it was, there had been few words spoken—Kal saying little during their preparations and meal, and Gwyn withdrawing all the while deeper into his mute silence—and yet a heavier stillness and quiet fell upon them. Kal's was the first watch, and, as the sun grew large and orange on the narrow horizon afforded by the valley's gorge, Gwyn removed himself from the point of vantage to one of the stony columns and sat down. Placing his weapons and baggage beside him, he leaned against the tall black stone, pulled his cloak over himself, and bowed his head. Within a few minutes, the young man was asleep.
Thirteen
The sun set, red and wavering, and gave the sky over to the stars. A swollen moon was poised to break into the eastern sky, but it would be an hour or two until it did. As the darkness deepened, Kal paced back and forth through the standing stones, looking first to the west then to the east, then to the west again. There was little to see in the blackness footing the knoll. The crickets maintained a low buzz in a million rhythmic chirps, and fireflies dotted the night, their lights waxing and waning like lazy green sparks. The forested hills surrounding the valley were indiscernible save as an inky, irregular stain along the horizon that blotted out the stars. Kal studied the sky, tracing with this eye the disjointed starpoint figures of the Raven, the Ploughman, the Stag, and the North Crown, set with its polestar jewel. He caressed the delicate form of Alargha, the Swan, with his gaze. He thought of the feast with Magan and his hammerfolk in the Great Hall of the Stars, then let his mind wander where it would.
Soon the sky over the eastern end of the valley began to glow with the approach of the rising moon. He watched its silver face break above the forest and climb over the trees. The moon flooded the valley with a pale and misty glow. What fears his imagination had presented to his waking mind were banished by the lambent beauty of the landscape before him. He crossed again through the western portal and leaned over the terrace wall but could see nothing of the pool below.
Behind him, Gwyn coughed in his sleep. More than once the huddled form had stirred and moaned in the grip of some dream. The young Holdsman had slipped onto his side, his knees pulled up to his chest. No longer the bumbling boy, Kal mused, looking at him. Gwyn's adolescent awkwardness was fading and being transmuted into sinewed brawn and a self-assurance that Kal found increasingly disconcerting, all the more so given his friend's muteness. But change had come fas
t in the circumstances of recent happenings—a change that affected them all, himself included.
Kal looked again to the moon caught between the standing stones. It had risen higher in the sky. Soon he would wake Gwyn and let him take a turn at watch. Sleep pulled at Kal, and his eyelids grew heavy. He walked again through the circle of stones, trying to shake the cobwebs spun by weariness from his head, not wanting to slip in his vigilance . . . needing to remain alert . . . only a few more minutes . . .
Kal's eyes snapped open. He was still standing, but he had dozed off. Something had woken him—a horn. Its harsh note faded in the distance and fell silent. It sounded again. Kal peered up the path into the darkness of the Woods of Tircoil. These blasts were closer than the ones that had turned them back from Hoël's Dyke. They sounded like they were coming from the path leading to the Well.
Kal ran to wake up Gwyn and, kneeling by the young man, gently shook him awake.
"Quiet, Gwyn. They're coming."
Gwyn lifted his head, then sprang to his feet, snatched up his sword belt and began to buckle it around his waist. Kal retrieved his own weapons and gear and joined Gwyn, who had walked over to the eastern side of the knoll. A horn winded again. Kal scanned the walls of the valley. He hadn't reckoned on this. The slopes would be difficult to climb in full daylight, but at night and in the panic of flight it would be well-nigh impossible.
"From the sound of it, they can't be far off Hoël's Dyke . . ."
Again came the faint but insistent blast of a horn. Kal recognized something about the sound, something familiar in its unfamiliar tone. His eyes widened in recognition.
"Gwyn! That's no highland hunting horn. It's Gharssûlian—of course! The Southwoldsmen would not brave the Woods on their own, but if you set a troop of Black Scorpions at their heels . . . We've got to get out of here. We've got to lose them in the Woods. If we can make Mousehold . . ." Kal grabbed Gwyn by the arm and pushed him into a trot down the path they had already three times travelled. "Listen, we have one chance, and one chance only. We can't climb the sides—too steep. And we can't walk farther down the valley, or we'll never get out. So we run this way—" Again a horn was winded; then, as if in response, a wolf's howl rose eerily.
Gwyn tore his arm out of Kal's grip and stopped dead in his tracks. He pointed up the path, shaking both his arm and his head.
"I know! I know! It seems madness. We've got to run towards them, faster than fast." Kal's fear became choking, and he grabbed Gwyn again, pushing him along. "If we can make the ridge, we can escape into the Woods between the ridge and the swamp and make for the old woman's cottage. They may follow us on the path, but I don't know if they'd dare go into the Woods themselves at night—and I know what you're thinking, but I'd rather take my chance with the wolves, or waldscathes, or whatever, than the Scorpions. Now run!"
With that, the two Holdsmen galloped down the path, Kal carrying in his hands the water skins. On they bolted, then up the long slope leading to the lip of the valley's eastern end. The horns sounded repeatedly, their blasts drawing rapidly nearer as the two men closed the distance with them. Wolf howls, too, laced the night air, rising and falling. From where, Kal could not discern—they seemed everywhere. As they reached the crest of the ridge, hearts pounding and chests heaving, another sound met Kal's ears. It was the baying of hounds.
"Lymers!" Kal cried, his panic near complete. "Th-they've brought dogs! Into the Woods, Gwyn, as you value your life!"
Gwyn pointed at Kal's throat and arched his fingers, drawing them back.
"What! The pios?" What was the boy thinking?
Gwyn nodded, pulling his fingers past Kal's throat again.
"No, no, it won't work!" Kal screamed. "They found us again, and now they have dogs . . . . Just run, Gwyn! Run!"
Off the road and into the trees Kal thrashed, Gwyn close on his heels. While the path had been bathed in moonlight, the woods were veiled in thick darkness. The tree trunks loomed out of the blackness at him. Kal could hear the horns, the hounds, the wolves, and he could hear Gwyn careering through the undergrowth behind him.
A root or stone caught Kal's toe. He stumbled and pitched forward onto the forest floor, then saw an explosion of white fire as his head hit a rock. He pushed himself off the ground, feeling around for the lost water skins. Something trickled from his hairline down his temple. He was bleeding. His hand fell on a lump, cool, soft, and swollen. One skin was intact. Kal's hand brushed over leaf, twig, and stone. He found the other skin. It was torn and lay limp on the wet ground. Gwyn rushed past. Kal threw himself scrambling back to his feet, nearly buckling at the bolt of pain that shot from his left knee. He gritted his teeth and hopped, stumbling back to a run, but could barely make out the bobbing form of Gwyn not two or three paces in front of him.
It seemed to Kal that the darkness deepened even further as they ran. Time blurred. Had they run for seconds? Minutes? Or even longer? Up and down slopes, clambering over deadfalls and across narrow cuts and runnels in the forest floor—running, ever running. In the lightless forest it was impossible to tell, and impossible to know in which direction they were moving, except that the baying of the hounds remained ever at their backs, so that they must be heading roughly north.
He had panicked, he realized, and panicked badly. Now, in the midst of their flight, he could see it clearly. There was not a chance that they would ever find the old woman's cottage—Mousehold, she called it. And a mouse hole was what they needed! Now they would be caught, and whatever was left of them unmauled by the dogs would be crushed by the hunters. That would make an end of it . . . . Why had he bolted? The pios and songline had proven themselves once already. But there had been the horns, Gharssûlian horns. That meant Scorpions. And the hounds meant Telessarian trackers. And the wolf howls meant—
"Stop it, Kalaquinn!" he chided himself. "Keep it together! Don't lose your head!"
But it was so black. And the wolves' howling seemed to grow pervasive through the Woods, coming from all quarters and from every distance. From the hounds' baying, Kal knew that the dogs and men were gaining on them. Mixed now with the barks were the shouts of men. The horns had ceased sounding. There had been so many horn blasts. Why . . . ? Unless—yes! They had used the horns to frighten their quarry, to flush it out and put it to flight. And, oh, but it had worked! They must have mustered a force along Hoël's Dyke earlier in the day and then come in force at night. And now the hunters were on the scent and closing—they had left the path and were tracking them through the Woods of Tircoil.
Fear clutched at Kal's throat. He reached up with his hand and touched the pios. If only he had stayed at the Well. His fingers jerked across the strings as he ran. The wires tinkled mutely. No music came from the little harp, and no song came from Kal's mouth. His fingers jerked again across the wires.
In front of him, Gwyn's black form melted, disappearing into the thick curtain of night enshrouding the forest. Kal caught sight of him again for a moment before he was once more swallowed in darkness.
"Gwyn! Gwyn!"
Kal could hear his companion running ahead of him, though he seemed farther away.
"Gwyn! Wait for me! Don't lose me!" Kal heard the strain of panic in his own voice.
His forehead still bled freely down his face. His head pounded and his knee burned. He was growing desperately tired, burdened by the weight of hopelessness as much as by his baggage and gear. Rhodangalas seemed to catch on every branch and bush he passed, as did the bow over his shoulder. On his back, his quiver and codynnos thumped him more and more heavily. He clung to the remaining water skin with both hands, which made it all the more awkward to run.
"Gwyn!"
No response.
"Gwyn! Wait!"
Ahead of him loomed only silence.
"Gwyn?" Kal called out, still running ahead. Panic bloomed afresh in his breast and rose cold and acid in his gorge.
Like a man floating half-submerged in water, Kal felt disjointed from his surroundi
ngs in the darkness and aware of nothing but the steady slam of his heart in his ears and the sound of his own quick sucking breaths.
Still he ran.
"Gwyn! Where are—"
Kal ploughed into something and was knocked to the ground. The water skin flew from his hands and splattered on the forest floor out of his seeing. A black wave of despair swept over him—the water was all lost. Kal lay on the ground. Beside him, Gwyn struggled to his feet. He had run into his companion. In the dark, Kal saw Gwyn stand and peer into the night surrounding them. The baying of hounds was even closer and seemed to be coming from both behind and in front of them. The young Holdsman beside him held out an open palm as a sign to be still and listen. Kal pushed himself to his feet, disoriented. Perhaps he and Gwyn had run in a circle, or the Scorpions had chased them into a trap or had split forces and flanked and caught them. The possibilities whirled around in Kal's mind.
Kal shook his head, trying to clear it, and then listened intently to the sounds in the forest. While the wolf howls had, strangely, all but ceased, hounds encircled them now and were not more than a fifty paces away. From the insistent sound of the whining barks, Kal knew the dogs were leashed and restrained by their keepers—and if men held the dogs howling around them back, then Kal and Gwyn were hemmed in by Black Scorpion Dragoons.
Out of the corner of his eye, Kal saw the flicker of movement as Gwyn reached over his shoulder and silently drew an arrow. This he set to his bowstring, bending the highland bow to full draw. The young Holdsman stood, feet planted firmly apart, awaiting the inevitable.
Kal unslung his bow, quiver, and codynnos and tossed these aside. His right hand slid to the hilt of Rhodangalas, and he silently drew the blade out of its scabbard. Even in the dearth of light, the sword glistened feebly. Kal sidled behind Gwyn and stood with him so that, back to back, they faced the unseen threat which encircled them. The two Holdsmen peered tense and alert into an impenetrable darkness filled with the hungry baying howls of the dogs and the unheard and unseen presence of their masters. In but a moment, the dogs would be loosed, and then the Scorpions would be upon them. It was simply a matter of time.
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