Men came hurrying out of the trees with their tools grasped in their fists. Half a dozen, then ten, then fifteen—they gathered in a silent crowd with the children and a few women behind them. Michael felt very weary.
'Pax vobiscum,' he said.
They started at that, muttering amongst themselves. The Ulfberht drew many stares. Finally one man stepped forward. He was as barbarous looking as the rest, clad in deerskins and rough wool, but his head was shaven.
'Et cum spirito tuo.'
THE BROTHER'S NAME was Dyrnius, and he made them welcome despite the reservations of the other villagers. They stayed for three days, resting the horses and themselves. Cat caused a minor sensation when she cleaned herself up and the men saw her face properly. She was as lovely as ever, but it was a fine-edged loveliness now, as sharp as frost. She was as slender as a sapling, her eyes huge in her pinched face. Purplepink lesions, healed and half-healed, old and new, striped her body, and in the nights Michael kissed each one, mourning. He made love to her as though he were afraid his weight would snap her in two.
The village was the last settlement of men before the Wolfweald, a forgotten place that Brother Nennian had come to twelve summers before and that the Knights rarely visited. The people were hungry for news once they had overcome their initial fear, and they were consumed with curiosity about the fact that the two travellers had come from the south, from the terrible depths of the weald. Michael and Cat had little to say to them.
On the third night, lying entwined in the hut that had been set aside for them, they heard hoofbeats off in the wood, galloping faint and far away, and the wolves baying at the new moon. They knew they were still pursued, and left on the fourth morning with the priest's blessing upon them.
Endless days, ceaseless travelling. They would stop for a while, and then move on as the beasts got close. The settlements grew in size and frequency; they passed other roads in the wood, saw the spikes of churches through the trees and bypassed troops of Knights who patrolled the forest tracks. They made slow time, always headed north, sometimes running across the signs of the tribes in the woods, glimpsing figures in the trees which were as wary as animals. Three times they came upon the remains of men burnt at stakes, and once they found an entire encampment destroyed, stinking with the unburied dead, alive with gore crows and foxes. The Knights were exacting revenge for the attack of the FoxPeople. It seemed like years ago.
'Where are we going?' Cat had asked him, and he had answered: 'To find Ringbone's people.' But that was only a half-truth. As spring edged into summer and they discarded the heaviest of their furs he told her at last that he wanted to go home. He wanted to return to the morning he had left and be given his boyhood back again. They were heading for the cave mouth they had entered this place from, the one unchanging door that would lead him out at the bridge in his own world. And he asked her to come through it with him.
He thought for a moment that she would fly at him. Her eyes blazed. But it was her sudden tears catching fire from the sunlight. She said nothing and they travelled the next two days in a stiff silence, nor could he draw her on the subject. It became absurdly maddeningly taboo.
They became aware of being watched again, but it was not the wood this time. There was hooted laughter in the trees that degenerated into snarling, and they thought they saw faces in the branches looking down on them as they rode. Little things began to go wrong. The biggest waterskin somehow developed a leak. The horses went intermittently lame. Michael's girth split in two and he discovered that teeth had gnawed it thin. Cat shouted Mirkady's name into the trees, sure that the Wyrim were behind it, but there was no reply.
'They've left me,' she whispered. 'I'm not one of them any more.' Nothing Michael could say would cheer her. The guilt of it twisted like a cold blade in his stomach. Whatever life she had led here before his coming, he had destroyed it—and now he planned to desert her. She must come with him. She had to. There was nothing here for her.
Midsummer came and went. Michael's hair turned almost white, though his beard was salt and pepper, grizzled as an old sea dog's. Cat looked like his daughter ... no, his granddaughter. They travelled north like a pair of exiles seeking rest, and all the while the pursuit never left them. It was a distant noise in the night, a rank beast smell in the dark hour before dawn. Though they had recovered from the worst ravages of the weald, they grew worn and irritable with the constant watching. The day they finally chanced upon one of the fox men out on a solitary hunt, Michael almost killed him, riding him down in a mindless reflex. It was only when the bruised tribesman shouted 'Utwychtanl' desperately that he lowered his sword, the red haze leaving his eyes. Recognition took him, and he heard his own joyful, relieved laughter creaking out of his mouth.